There are plenty more examples. Reldata and Nexsan have doubled up to sell Reldata's NAS and IP SAN gateway with Nexsan's SATA disk systems. Guess who's in the crosshairs? (See Startups Seek Double-Team Plays.)
NetApp doesn't seem worried. Its coping mechanism includes a move into enterprise SAN gear in a bid to reinvent itself along the lines of EMC which, of course, is reinventing itself along the lines of IBM. (See NetApp Scales Up.)
NetApp's tack appears to be working so far, as the vendor claimed sizeable revenues from its new enterprise systems last quarter. (See NetApp: 'We're Winning' and IBM Addresses High End.) Still, there are other forces at work that could shift NetApp's future plans.
Despite solid financials, NetApp faces an increasingly aggressive fight at the high end, particularly from EMC and HP, even as smaller fry like 3PAR nip at its heels. The result will challenge the NAS vendor's stakes in both NAS and SAN segments, where robust growth is favoring lots of activity, on both the sales and financial fronts.
Indeed, there are rumblings that NetApp could be a combination candidate at some point. In our latest storage poll, 19 percent of 103 readers think NetApp is the likeliest storage company to be acquired, following 22 percent who think the same of QLogic, and ahead of 17 percent for Avamar, 14 percent for Kazeon and unspecified Others, 7 percent for EqualLogic, and 6 percent for Asigra.
To realize the benefits of cloud-native software, an application must actually be cloud-native—designed to run in the cloud, interacting with disaggregated cloud services, fully manageable as code—to deliver the expected benefits.
By combining resources and expertise, the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium will offer a blueprint for how industries can adapt to an AI-dominated future.
IT leaders should heed the guidance of cybersecurity insurance providers who think businesses should prioritize security education, incident preparedness, regular internal audits, and ongoing vulnerability scanning and patching.
