"Can anybody give me any detail and substance to NetApp's cloud strategy, technology and deployments?"I ask this genuinely, as despite asking the company directly for over 2yrs, and despite regularly looking myself through their blogs and whitepapers, I'm finding it really hard to locate any information re NetApp and IaaS, PaaS or SaaS usage or technologies (direct of indirect).
Oh of course I've heard the stories re large company X using ### many filers for search or webmail, and other such things - but frankly these strike me as very much a standard use of a technology coupled with significant discounts linked to volume & name etc. Not specifically addressing the changed requirements in a cloud (thinking IaaS) environment (ie individual assets may have less availability req, object protocols often needed, much greater connectivity reqs etc).
What I'm looking for info on is :-
1) A technology & commercial model that is more aligned at a web 2.0/3.0 business, with vast data scale, objects & files, geographical distribution, policy based mngt, compression & dedupe of data, adequate performance, adequate availability of a physical asset but v high availability of the information, and at a 7yr TCO price point substantially less than today's post discount per TB priceI'm wanting to like their 'cloud' technology but frankly speaking at the moment trying to find out about it is like trying to knit fog (sorry couldn't resist)
2) Any info re an object store capability (although Val Bercovici has already said he's not prepared to pre-announce anything right now)
3) Any info re a direct to market SaaS offering?
4) Any details, info or case studies re genuine cloud companies or web 2.0/3.0 companies that are using or planning to use NetApp in decent sized (ie multi-PB) cloud deployments
If any NetApp'er or anybody wants to point me towards some substance and fact then I'd be more than grateful :)
When you find out, can you let the rest of us know as well? I'm stumped -- all competitive bashing aside.
ReplyDeleteHi Ian,
ReplyDeleteSome of this may address your questions:
http://blogs.netapp.com/exposed/2009/09/netapp-cloud-resources.html
Val,
ReplyDeleteThanks - an interesting collection of information.
Re the doc at "http://media.netapp.com/documents/netapp-fast-start-workshop-brief.pdf" :-
1) Puzzled why given you sponsor an F1 team you've used a generic non-descript car in the image? ;)
2) The phrase "A NetApp cloud-enabled • infrastructure solution—self-service, pay-as-you-grow model; APIs; modular block structure; external cloud services integration" is interesting - care to elaborate on the API & cloud services integration points?
3) What version of ITIL is being looked at? and what credentials & experience does NetApp have of adapting & adopting ITIL in large organisations?
Re the doc at "http://media.netapp.com/documents/wp-7081.pdf" :-
4) On page 3 your quote AWS EC2 as being PaaS - you're the only company saying this, with AWS themselves stating that EC2 is IaaS
5) On page 3 your IaaS column actually appears to be managed service / hosting providers - again not in line with everybody else's definition of IaaS
6) The document (and various parts of the web site) refers to 'pay as you go' - for NetApp cloud, does this mean costs reduce dynamically & automatically as less storage is used?
In your blog at "http://blogs.netapp.com/exposed/2009/08/the-burden-of-success.html" :-
7) you quote "Recognized Cloud leaders such as Joyent, Oracle, Rackspace, T-Systems, Telstra, Terremark & Yahoo! (to name but a few NetApp Cloud Partners) are all differentiating from their competitors with a NetApp Unified SOI as their foundation" - however I note that neither Google or AWS are listed there? Surely the two largest and leading cloud providers...
8) You also mention that Opex matters more than Capex - sorry but I disagree, in that it's the TCO that matters and that is a combination of both! To my mind a couple of the key changes in the cloud area are scale and budget - with the former going up several orders of magnitude, and the latter going down several orders of magnitude.
I see nothing relating to technology more aligned to a 'recovery orientated architecture' where 'tin/software' failure is expected, and as such component availability as a requirement is reduced in priority (in favour of price point) and the architecture of the service deals automatically with the regular failure of components.
Netapp appear to confusing/mixing 'IT as a service' with 'cloud infrastructure' - whilst the two have some elements in common there are significant differences.
There are lots of repeated subjective & relative claims (eg 'better', 'faster', 'improved' etc) but sadly with no context given against what is being compared.
Don't get me wrong, there are lots of good points and technologies there, but most (if not all) have been around for some time, were designed for the enterprise environment, and have more 'traditional price points' - the only things that seem to have changed is the brand marketing?
I'm sorry to keep saying & asking this but "what's different?" - most of the 'savings' or 'benefits' claims have no backup, evidence or proof. Also I see nothing changing in your commercial or technology models to better enable cloud usage. Please don't take this as negative, I want to like your technology and like the unified platform approach re NAS & SAN - but I just can't see anything for cloud other than a wall of marketing claims :(
Cheers
Ian
Hi Ian,
ReplyDeleteI fear blog comments are not the best medium for a discussion as involved as this. Your NetApp account team are also great resources for this kind of detail.
Briefly:
- NetApp OpsMgr (with Provisioning & Protection Mgr plug-ins) provide the SDK for Cloud automation. This same framework will also soon have a Web Services interface. Details and timing available under NDA.
- NetApp PS have been delivering ITIL compliant best-practices for almost 6 years. NDDC is built on top of that knowledge.
- AWS offers both IaaS & PaaS
- NetApp defines ITaaS as a superset of IaaS, PaaS, SaaS & STaaS
- Google & AWS are not (yet) using NetApp for Cloud, although we are used extensively for development, testing and other R&D areas.
- More IaaS players on Gartner's MQ use NetApp than any other storage vendor
- We will agree to disagree on the overwhelming significance of OpEx to Cloud SP's
- VMware CTO, Dave Hitz & T-Systems are discussing on the VMworld stage this week how Royal Dutch Shell saved 30% overall by moving to NetApp-powered Cloud IT as a Service.
- Oracle saved >$200M using NetApp for PaaS, also delayed new Data Center build-out by 3 years due to NetApp Storage Efficiency
- Genentech moved to GoogleApps Cloud, then for Private Cloud reduced their data center footprint by 30%, while growing business 60% using NetApp for VMware. Also pushed out DC build-out by 5 years!
- Accenture (Navitaire division), BT, FT, Sensis, Telstra and others are all NetApp references showing dramatic savings for IaaS, PaaS or SaaS Cloud projects.
As I said, please reach out to your account team for more details not readily sharable via blog comments.
-Val.
Val,
ReplyDeleteAgain thanks - agree that blog comments are not the best way, but NetApp's global account structure & resources, and account mngt teams, certainly don't help with this and seem to know, or be interested, very little about these topics...
I'm struggling with the statement "ITIL compliant" as there is no such thing, and orgs that believe there is clearly haven't spent time as ITIL practitioner... Anyhow, I'm still unclear if NetApp is utilising the ITIL v2 or v3 frameworks? (as there are major differences)
Which Garter MQ do you refer to? (ignoring common views on such funded reports/research)
Again my feeling is very much that NetApp are mixing managed service and/or service provider with Cloud - and marketing shareable technologies as 'cloud' which is not the same or correct... From what NetApp appear to be defining as 'cloud' I would appear to have multiple PBs of NetApp 'cloud' storage (given that's it's all shared between, and provided to, multiple services and multiple companies) - however I can assure you we simply regard this as shared infrastructure as part of a service orientated architecture and organisation, definitely not cloud. For true cloud storage we use very different technology with a very different TCO price point than our FAS (or CX/DMX/AMS/USP) arrays. Happy to look again if your new 'cloud storage' has a lower TCO than FAS arrays...
Where do we locate NetApp's TCO model for cloud storage? As, being in a cloud provider and a major IT service provider myself, the TCO is key & king, and opex is only 1 of many cost elements involved...
Again you talk about savings, but compared to what, and from where, and over what timeframes? context & disclosure is vital...
Do you have any comments re previous points 2 & 6 above?
Lastly any comments re the three paragraphs above re :-
* I see nothing relating to technology more aligned to a 'recovery orientated architecture' where 'tin/software' failure is expected, and as such component availability as a requirement is reduced in priority (in favour of price point) and the architecture of the service deals automatically with the regular failure of components.There are lots of repeated subjective & relative claims (eg 'better', 'faster', 'improved' etc) but sadly with no context given against what is being compared.
* There are lots of repeated subjective & relative claims (eg 'better', 'faster', 'improved' etc) but sadly with no context given against what is being compared. (In the same way I praise Netapp for benchmark disclosure and critic EMC for refusing, any benefits & savings must have context disclosure)
* I'm sorry to keep saying & asking this but "what's different?" - most of the 'savings' or 'benefits' claims have no backup, evidence or proof. Also I see nothing changing in your commercial or technology models to better enable cloud usage.
More than happy to have an NDA call / VC / meeting with the right people but European teams are like hitting head against wall...
And very much appreciate your time & effort in response here - good dialogue is always appreciated :)
Cheers
Ian
Hi Ian,
ReplyDeleteAs Val just tweeted, it seems this discussion is just not on the same semantic wavelength anymore. For example, Val seems to be talking about storage in support of (enterprise) cloud infrastructure, whereas you’re talking specifically about (consumer-oriented) cloud storage. Two very different things. Perhaps NetApp will address true cloud storage via the rumored object storage product in the future.
Anyway, having worked on many massive-scale consumer-oriented infrastructure (PaaS & SaaS) projects here in the valley, I can at least confirm that NetApp storage is very scalable from a performance and manageability perspective, as well as cost-effective from a capacity perspective. If you knew Apple, Cisco, Oracle, Facebook & Yahoo! IT, you’d know these guys don’t make decisions about multi-million $$ infrastructure on the golf course! It’s all about POC’s, which are long, demaning & sometimes painful for all involved – but in the end produce solid recommendations.
Here’s a good example of a POC (sanitized of course)
http://www.slideshare.net/psi888/vmware-emc-vs-netapp
The key to storage efficiency at massive scale is to start with a new project requiring new infrastructure (many cloud projects are like that, but should also add self-service automation & chargeback) and implement NetApp’s best practices for RAID, volume layout, thin provisioning, cloning, mirroring, vaulting and of course dedupe. This, essentially, is what they’re calling NDDC now - The recipe for how to do it all correctly, (based on the latest revs of DOT I presume), with perhaps the chef to cook it for you if you’d like ;)