NetApp, VMware Strengthen Ties

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Network Appliance, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP), a leading provider of storage and data management solutions, announced today that it has strengthened its relationship with VMware, the global leader in software for industry-standard virtualized desktops and servers, to collaborate on joint engineering, marketing, service, and support. This relationship covers many of the best practices in engineering, marketing, customer education and advocacy, service, and support that the two companies have developed over the last few years in real-world deployments at more than 3,000 customer sites. It also underscores that the value of server virtualization is dramatically increased with the addition of robust networked storage on the back end. Direct-attached storage (DAS) and in-server storage are simply not the answer in enterprise-class virtualized environments.

The NetApp-VMware relationship is designed to enable the two companies to work on joint engineering solutions for advanced application mobility, backup and recovery, and disaster recovery. Together NetApp and VMware are focused on making virtualized server, desktop, and storage infrastructures operate seamlessly to deliver agile, available, and cost-effective IT environments to enterprise customers.

The relationship embodies both companies vision for data centers to be built around server virtualization and storage virtualization and the companies’ commitment to an open and collaborative business model, emphasizing the delivery of high-performance, reliable, interoperable IT solutions based on industry standards.

NetApp and VMware joint engineering projects are also targeted at further simplifying disaster recovery, streamlining test and development environments, optimizing storage utilization of virtual desktop consolidations, and ultimately creating a tightly integrated server-to-storage virtualization solution that makes next-generation data management real and affordable for the enterprise.

“In our agency, losing data or taking too long to retrieve it negatively impacts our ability to work a case successfully. We are often under court-established timelines, so without timely and reliable access to documents and information, our attorneys can find themselves behind the eight ball in prosecuting a case,” said George White, chief information officer at the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General. “Having NetApp® storage has really facilitated our move to a VMware virtualized server environment, and together the solutions have allowed us to dramatically minimize the risk and duration of any business downtime.”Network Appliance Inc. (Nasdaq: NTAP)

VMware Inc.