August 16, 2016
Though some may say that NetApp all flash storage was “late to the game” in the market, their recent performance has proven critics wrong. In the first quarter of 2016, NetApp finds itself in the number two spot for overall market share of the all flash array market. That’s an impressive jump from their previous spot at number four and shows that NetApp has become a real contender in the market. Here’s just a few of NetApp’s staggering numbers:
- 238.2% year over year revenue growth.
- That’s 2.7 times faster than the overall growth of the all flash market at 87.4%.
- NetApp has moved from the number four to the number two spot and has now surpassed other storage developers such as Pure Storage and IBM.
- NetApp’s all flash array business has grown to a net revenue of more than $700 million.
But what makes NetApp special? Why are they seeing such tremendous growth?
SolidFire Acquisition and the Hybrid Cloud
One possible explanation for NetApp’s dominance is their acquisition of SolidFire. SolidFire brought to NetApp an established and leading all flash storage solution with a focus on the hybrid cloud. NetApp announced at the time of the acquisition that SolidFire was acquired to cover the full breadth of the flash storage market. After acquiring SolidFire, NetApp preserved the name and included in their line of storage solutions.
Any environment looking to transition to a hybrid cloud model is going to find SolidFire an attractive product. SolidFire is a self-healing, web-based architecture that is designed to integrate with numerous all flash platforms, such as OpenStack, CloudStack, and VMware.
Part of NetApp’s success this year is no doubt the result of capitalizing on the industry’s push towards hybrid cloud.
What are the Benefits of Flash Storage?
Flash storage has become an increasingly popular platform for tier 1 applications. Unlike hard disk storage, all flash does not have a mechanical arm or spinning disk to slow down its potential IOPS. Instead, everything is electronic, and therefore, only limited by the quality of the network. In ideal setting all flash can yield 10x the regular expected IOPS. By attaching your tier 1 applications to the all flash array you can drastically improve their performance.
In addition to performance, all flash could actually be cheaper that HDD in the long run. NetApp all flash solutions can scale non-disruptively, so as your business grows, your storage grows right along with it.
You’re sure to have more space in the data center as well. All flash storage does not require nearly as many storage chassis in order to accomplish the same job. This saves your company the expense and hassle of cooling, powering, and maintaining the extra hardware.
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