Serving Customer Needs Earns NetApp the Microsoft Private Cloud Partner of the Year Award for 2012

Annual Microsoft Awards Honor Relationships That Deliver the Most Innovative Solutions to Address Customer Challenges

SUNNYVALE, Calif. - June 25, 2012 - Today, in recognition of its work helping customers and partners build private cloud solutions on the Microsoft platform, NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) has won the 2012 Microsoft Private Cloud Partner of the Year award. NetApp was honored among a global field of top Microsoft partners for demonstrating excellence in innovation and implementation of customer solutions based on Microsoft technology. The honor reinforces NetApps long-standing commitment to storage and storage management solutions for Microsoft environments that enable organizations to reduce costs, increase agility, improve efficiency, and utilize proven platforms.

Awards were presented in multiple categories, with winners chosen from a set of nearly 3,000 entrants worldwide. NetApp was recognized for providing outstanding solutions and services in Private Cloud Partner of the Year. NetApp was also named a finalist in the Virtualization and Management award category. Winners will be honored on stage at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto (July 8-12, 2012).

In response to corporate mandates to do more with less, businesses are changing how they deliver and manage IT services and applications with secure, on-demand private cloud solutions. A recent IDC survey of 679 U.S. IT decision makers indicates that approximately one-third (32%) already have some type of private cloud implementation in production, although most are limited to supporting specific user groups or applications at this time. An additional 37% are in the early stages of implementation and/or planning for a private cloud[1]. Recognizing the dramatic impact of this move on IT, NetApp and its partners have been working with technology leaders, such as Microsoft, to make the promise of cloud computing a reality for business.

NetApp and Microsoft: Breakthrough Collaboration Delivers Breakthrough Solutions

Storage Is Foundational: With storage as the foundation of a private cloud, NetApp has worked with Microsoft to deliver a solution that enables customers to move from virtualization to a private cloud while reducing the cost of delivering IT services and applications by 50% or more./li>

Customers Go further, faster: Customers can enjoy the faster delivery of IT services and applications with the combination of NetApp storage and the Microsoft private cloud, featuring Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center 2012.

Increased Agility: With NetApp for Microsoft private cloud solutions, customers can respond faster to changing business needs while enabling high application availability with an agile IT infrastructure.

FlexPod with Microsoft Private Cloud: This reference architecture, which was the first design to be validated by Microsoft for the updated Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track program, with its consolidated guidance enables channel partners to transition customers to the cloud more quickly and with reduced risk.

Customers Build Private Cloud Solutions on NetApp and Microsoft

ING DIRECT

In its award entry, NetApp highlighted recent work with ING DIRECT, the worlds largest direct bank. ING DIRECT is known for its innovative online banking offerings; however, an antiquated infrastructure for provisioning development and test environments hindered ING DIRECTs ability to bring new products to market. Despite a business goal of rapidly expanding service offerings, provisioning could take over 12 weeks just to support creation of a development environment.

As a strategic priority, we needed to deliver innovation faster, so we looked to NetApp and its partners to help speed things up in a smart way, said Andrew Henderson, CIO, ING DIRECT Australia. With our Microsoft private cloud solution built on FlexPod from NetApp and Cisco we reduced environment provisioning from 12 weeks to 10 minutes, improving developer productivity and business agility. Through the Bank in a Box private cloud solution, were able to provide anyone in the company with access to applications, services, configurations and 5.5 TB of data, with the assurances that theyll integrate seamlessly with Microsoft standard technologies.

University of Waterloo

The University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, selected NetApp for its Microsoft private cloud, meeting the need to provide more flexible services, rapid provisioning, better management tools, and self-service capabilities. This solution, implemented in cooperation with NetApp partner Alantex Corp., included an assessment of the universitys existing infrastructure, a custom-designed private cloud roadmap, and advanced integration with System Center 2012 and Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V.

We depend on NetApp and our Microsoft private cloud to provide agile, reliable, and stable service to other departments, students, and staff, said Greg Parks, infrastructure architect, University of Waterloo. The initiative helped us reduce hardware costs and shortened our react time significantly, enabling us to focus on strategic activities for our customers.

Supporting Quotes

Mike Schutz, General Manager, Windows Server and Management, Microsoft

Microsoft is pleased to recognize NetApp as the Private Cloud Partner of the Year. Utilizing their comprehensive portfolio of Microsoft private cloud solutions, NetApp aims to enable customers to reduce provisioning time, increase productivity and improve business agility.

Phil Brotherton, Vice President, Enterprise Software Ecosystem, NetApp

This recognition underscores the collaboration between NetApp, our partners, and Microsoft in private cloud development. Together, were helping businesses build flexible and efficient private cloud solutions that not only transition companies to a shared IT infrastructure now,

LINK:	http://www.netapp.com/us/company/news/press-releases/news-rel-20120625...
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