Three-year ROI of 457% from NetApp Cloud Volumes

The fastest-growing segment in cloud storage is file-based services. File storage continues to be an essential element of on-premises IT infrastructure, and as more and more enterprise workloads move to the cloud, demand has increased for storage services that can be managed seamlessly across a hybrid environment. IDC is forecasting data in the cloud to realize a 5-year compound annual growth rate of 36.3%.

NetApp and Google Cloud have partnered for several years to enable enterprise-grade file storage as a fully managed service. NetApp^® Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud makes it possible for customers to run traditional and cloud-native applications without any changes to code, process, and technical staff, simplifying migrations.

IDC interviewed six organizations that were using the NetApp Cloud Volumes platform to manage cloud data located on Google Cloud. Those interviewed had robust knowledge of the benefits and costs of using Cloud Volumes for Google Cloud. IDC asked participants a wide variety of in-depth qualitative and quantitative questions to understand the impact of Cloud Volumes on financials, IT professionals, and their core business.

IDC’s business value research focused on the benefits that the participating organizations achieved in deploying and using Cloud Volumes to manage their data in Google Cloud. The six organizations—representing retail, finance, insurance, and entertainment—stated that they were able to lower their total cost of operation significantly with NetApp Cloud Volumes, because it’s a fully managed cloud-native file storage service that seamlessly integrates with Google Cloud. This service decreased the complexity of managing and securing cloud data for the participants’ organizations. Participants also noted that NetApp Cloud Volumes easily scaled to match business demands and significantly decreased the time they spent managing cloud data and applications.

The IDC analysis found that interviewed organizations realized an average annual savings of $4.7 million, $730,000 average annual savings benefits per 100 usable terabytes, 10.9 months to payback, and a 3-year return on investment (ROI) of 457% from NetApp Cloud Volumes. They accomplished these benefits by:

• Having fewer unplanned outages, which reduced the impact of downtime from end-user and revenue perspectives
• Improving the productivity and performance of IT teams—such as infrastructure management teams and disaster recovery teams—through easier configuration, auditing, testing, provisioning, and scaling
• Enabling the organizations to foster an environment of higher end-user productivity and revenue growth through better performance, availability, and agility

These two customer quotes reinforce the benefits of NetApp Cloud Volumes for Google Cloud.

• “NetApp Cloud Volumes for Google Cloud reduced costs with less complexity and better performance. NetApp also allows us to scale in response to the business demand and has increased cybersecurity protection.”
• “My organization wanted the scalability to move many of our applications to the cloud—NetApp Cloud Volumes gives us resilience. If we did not move many of these apps to the cloud, basically, provisioning storage and handling these apps on our own on an on-premises basis would be a nightmare.”

To find out more about the study’s demographics and methodology, and the benefits and opportunities it identifies, read the business value white paper.