Accelerating business transformations—yours and ours

If you had told me 20 years ago how powerful data would become, I might have raised an eyebrow. I had an inkling that data was increasing in value, but I had no idea that it would become the focus of my professional work, and even how I live my life.

The explosion of data and advances in technology are changing the way we work, live, and play. For every new app on our smart phones, there is a company in the background collecting, storing, and analyzing data to power their business.

One thing has become abundantly clear—the current environment presents technology leaders with unprecedented opportunities. The world is changing fast, and it’s up to us to make sure we are well-positioned to seize these opportunities.

This is a huge market opportunity for NetApp and for our partners. The world is pivoting to a hybrid cloud ecosystem with data at its core. NetApp’s portfolio meets that reality for customers in ways that our competitors just cannot match.

Gartner predicts that global businesses will be forced to accelerate digital business transformation plans by at least five years through 2024 to survive in a post-COVID-19 world that involves permanently higher adoption of remote work and digital touchpoints.

As a lifelong learner, I am a strong believer in the power of continually learning, and what is transformation if not a massive opportunity for learning?

To be successful in this climate, two things are vitally important: we need to learn to recognize the opportunities, and we need the expertise and tools to innovate and respond. Here's how I see the NetApp ecosystem doing both—and it all starts with our customers.

During the past year, our customers and our partners have discovered new needs: for flexibility, security, efficiency, and immediacy. With these needs come new expectations about how they want to consume technology and how they want to work with vendors. The subscription model has become dominant, with customers increasingly seeking to move from a CAPEX model to an OPEX one. They are tapping into new budgets to fund their futures, and they have tight timelines along with new ambitions. Our partners are transforming to meet these needs, and they’re engaging with NetApp in new ways. NetApp is on that journey, and we are also helping to drive it.

As a company, we are transforming how we do business by staying focused on one key thing: what our customers need. Together with our partners, we have an amazing track record spanning almost three decades, but we cannot rest on our past accomplishments. Instead, we are investing in our partners to leverage our combined expertise to help our customers embark on the transformation journey of a lifetime.

To drive success for our customers and are partners, we are building on our strengths in the data center business and creating the agility and expertise in the cloud that our customers know they need but don’t yet know how to attain. We are simplifying our offerings and the way we work with customers to improve their experience.

At the same time, we are modernizing our GTM strategy, empowering our partners, and digitizing our buying and selling processes to allow us to scale and become more efficient. In short, we are reinvigorating our partner ecosystem, so that together we can sell innovative solutions to customers in the ways they now want to buy.

With our on-premises customers, we are building on the trust we have developed over time and delivering the technology solutions they need to evolve their businesses. There are also myriad opportunities with brand-new customers—customers who are not familiar with NetApp or the breadth of our portfolio. They also need our expertise.

To reach them, we are reimagining everything we do. We started at square one, with our branding. From tone and messaging to ensuring that we are visible where these customers are, we have been examining every strategy and every process to make sure we are positioning ourselves for the incredible future we know is just ahead. And time will not wait for us.

For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past, or the present, are certain to miss the future.

—John F. Kennedy

This fiscal year we have ambitious goals because we see enormous opportunities for NetApp and for our partners. The world is pivoting to a hybrid cloud ecosystem with data at its core. And, together with our partners, we can deliver. Our portfolio is a perfect match for what customers need, and we’re investing in our partners to help them generate the maximum benefit from these opportunities.

More than ever before, our customers need us to share our expertise and provide specialized solutions that enable them to thrive in this new world. For that they need specialists. As specialists, our time has come, and we are exactly where we need to be to flourish now and in the post-pandemic world.

I invite you to learn more about NetApp and how we can help you transform your business.