How to Harness Your Data, Disrupt Your Industry and Deliver Like a Digital Rockstar

Real-World Examples from Companies That Dominate in the Era of Digital Disruption

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Digital Disruption – What Can You Do About It?

Disruption. It is happening to almost every industry and has the ability to shift the winds of enterprise fortune overnight. Whether it is with a bang or a whimper, disruption has impacted all of us.

Consider what we can do today that we couldn’t do even a few years ago: everything from ordering our groceries to hailing a cab to using 3D printing for medical implants or devices; new applications from start-ups, and improved products or services from traditional providers. They have all enhanced our personal and professional lives.

IntroductIon

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Blockbuster vs. NetflixOne of the most familiar stories of disruption is Blockbuster vs. Netflix2. Back in 2000, Blockbuster passed up the opportunity to purchase Netflix for $50 million3. Today Netflix is worth more than $100 billion4.

At the center of the Netflix success?

Data.

Netflix was able to innovate and disrupt an entire industry simply because they found better ways to compress, store, license, regulate and stream data to a content-hungry world that quickly adapted to content-on-demand. (After all, who wants to drive to a video store in the pouring rain when you can binge-watch three seasons of iZombie without ever leaving your home?)

Born in the CloudThe early success of innovators like Netflix paved the way for more innovation in the entertainment industry. LATTO is one example of a start-up company that took advantage of the global demand for content. According to venture firm Kleiner Perkins (KPCB), by the end of 2017 online video will account for 74% of all internet traffic. LATTO’s online cloud-based video platform gives content providers the tools to process, manage, deliver, and monetize video content to a global audience. In less than 10 years, they have attracted some of the biggest brands as customers, serving up content in more than 60 countries around the world. Read more about LATTO and their partnership with NetApp in Chapter Two.

What Can You Do?For many organizations, the opportunities unleashed by the era of the third platform - cloud, social, mobile and big data - are exciting. For others, predicting how these trends will impact their enterprise and making the right big bets as a result seem hazy.

Get Control of the “New Oil” – Your DataOne thing is clear: agility, speed, cost and flexibility are critical elements. Business leaders and decision makers need to run an enterprise that can quickly gain access and get insights from what is being referenced as the “new oil5.” Data is considered the single most important asset of any organization today.

Cloud Architects and Developers are being increasingly called upon to find better, faster, and cheaper ways to harness and serve data across every line of business that they serve within the enterprise.

Whatever future your industry and enterprise faces, you can be best prepared by having a cost-efficient, manageable, and controllable data strategy.

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chapter one

Why cloud, Why Microsoft azure?

You cannot have data management today without having some kind of cloud strategy.

Why?

It is the rate at which data is being created, acquired, stored, and archived.

It is simply too expensive and time- consuming today to build and keep building an on-premises data environment that is always available and always has the capacity you need, when you need it.

Consider the time-to-market needs of your business. Six-to-nine months used to be an acceptable time frame for building the infrastructure for a new application or service model. In fact, that used to be considered fast.

Today, that same time frame might get you fired. Business demands that IT turn around in days or even hours. In fact, business users are often bypassing IT, reaching for their own credit cards and ordering cloud services themselves.

Cloud is part of every organization today. And it needs to part of the strategy of every IT department.

There are many cloud strategies to choose from – private cloud, hybrid cloud, and public cloud – and many different providers within those decision points.

At NetApp, one of our strategic public cloud partnerships is our relationship with Microsoft.

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Myth Busting – Value versus PriceThere is a myth that Microsoft Azure is more expensive than other public cloud providers. Not so. All of the major cloud providers have been adjusting their pricing6 and introducing discounting in the past two years. In some cases, there are discounts as much as 70% off of published rates. When it comes to cloud pricing today, your costs are likely to be relatively equal, no matter which public cloud provider you select.

So the real decision about your public cloud vendor comes down to your needs as an organization and what problems you are trying to solve.

It’s about value and what your company values, embraces, and needs.

Are You Under Compliance or Regulatory Scrutiny?Microsoft generally has more global data centers, more compliance and regulatory coverage, and more partners building Azure solutions than any other public cloud provider. If compliance is a concern, Microsoft Azure is the answer – and if you are looking for add-ons, the Microsoft Azure Marketplace is a great place to start.

What’s Everyone Else Spending Time on with Azure?While generalizations can be dangerous, Azure is used very frequently for:

• Backup and Disaster Recovery

• Deploying Packaged Applications

• File Services – moving existing applications to the cloud

• Analytics

• Compliance & Security in the Cloud

Whether or not any of these apply to you, you still need to manage your data. That’s where our tight relationship with Microsoft comes in.

MYTh BuSTINg:

MICROSOFT AZuRE & OPEN SOuRCE

Microsoft is committed to Open Source – ensuring that developers can work within Azure, using preferred tools and technologies. So committed, in fact, that they that they rebranded from Windows Azure to Microsoft Azure to underscore this point. Azure is truly an open platform, supporting many open source communities. In fact, approximately 40% of Azure workloads are Open Source. Source Microsoft Tech Days, Vancouver

To read more about the Microsoft Azure difference, including a few name-brand testimonials, check out this page on the Microsoft website.

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Data – Your Biggest HeadacheDevelopers and cloud architects tell us that data is their biggest headache when it comes to working across a hybrid environ-ment. We’re not surprised —data is heavy and difficult to move; it is complex and needs to be copied and shared; and it needs to be protected, backed up, and restored.

Let’s face it. Spinning up compute is rela-tively easy in the cloud. Moving data? Not so easy. But with Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Azure, we make moving and managing data, fast and simple.

Cloud Volumes ONTAP for AzureWhile the next chapter goes into some real-world examples in a little more detail, it is important to keep something in mind: as you move to the cloud, you don’t want to realize you’ve created yet another data silo.

With that in mind, we’d like to introduce you to the single greatest data management platform available today.

Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Azure.

(All right, we might be a little bit biased, but read on and judge for yourself.)

here is the first surprise and something you might not know - you or one of your colleagues are likely already using ONTAP.

Why?

Just as you probably already have a Microsoft EA in place, you are likely already using ONTAP in your enterprise. ONTAP is the #1 branded storage OS in the world7. Every feature and benefit that ONTAP offers in the on-prem version is also available in the cloud version.

Through ONTAP and other offerings, NetApp brings more than two decades of experience compressing, storing, deduplicating, encrypting, and moving data to the cloud.

And Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Azure has some pretty cool features, too.

We’d like to introduce you to the single greatest data management platform available today... ONTAP is the #1 branded storage OS in the world7. Every feature and benefit that ONTAP offers in the on-prem version is also available in the cloud version.

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What is Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Azure?

Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Azure is a cloud-based service that gives you control of your data with the power of an enterprise storage software solution. Building your cloud storage environment on Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Azure provides the following enterprise-class features for your cloud storage. here is a deeper dive of the feature set:

Provision both NAS and SAN storage with NFS, CIFS, and iSCSI support.

Minimize your storage footprint with efficiency features such as data deduplication, thin provisioning, and data compression.

Zero-impact NetApp Snapshot™ copies with near-instantaneous point-in-time backups of your data without taking additional storage resources.

NetApp SnapMirror® technology brings your hybrid cloud environment together by tying on-premises FAS storage to your Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Azure environment.

Advanced data management features with the OnCommand management suite of tools, from in-depth monitoring and tracking of storage with OnCommand Insight to detailed storage instance control with OnCommand System Manager.

Replicate data across regions to ensure application availability.

Tight integration and support for most Microsoft workloads, including SnapMirror for SQL Server.

Single pane of glass - extend your IT infrastructure to Microsoft Azure to create a seamless hybrid cloud.

Tight integration and support for most Open Source workloads.

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OnCommand Cloud ManagerIf you want to use Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Azure, you need to know about OnCommand® Cloud Manager.

OnCommand is always free and always available for download. It is the first step to your Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Azure experience, as you need OnCommand to actually download and use Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Azure.

OnCommand gives you a simple point-and-click environment to manage the software and underlying cloud infrastructure for your cloud storage solution.

In SummaryWe’ve explored why you need a cloud strategy and what the biggest challenges are, and we have introduced you to the most popular data storage management platform in the world, ONTAP.

The next chapter explores real companies that are using Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Azure.

But, if you’ve heard enough, you can skip ahead to the offer that comes with this eBook – a 30-day free trial of Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Azure.

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chapter tWo

Some Great real-Life examples that rock the World

Even though we have more than 1,000 enterprise clients who have implemented Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Azure in the past year, we thought we would pick six different customers and showcase their success.

After all, nothing’s better than real-world examples. Find the example most relevant to you in the stories below.

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Story one:

Latto – What are you Watching? Serving Video on demand

LATTO is a fast-growing software company that provides video content management solutions. Due to the company’s success and rapid growth, their data footprint is growing at a rate of about seven terabytes per month.

For LATTO, their challenge was to meet their customer demands to quickly scale up or down and pay only for what they could use.

LATTO decided to embrace their cloud-first strategy in Microsoft Azure coupled with the management and efficiencies of Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Azure.

In this case, they not only are easily able to manage their solution in Microsoft Azure, but they also have been able to improve agility and efficiency for their video plat-forming customers. They did this by offering their solution in a hybrid environment that leverages Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Azure’s flexibility and speed.

If you want to know more, the published case study is here.

“As we began to develop our cloud strategy, we knew we wanted to go with an established authority in data and cloud,” explains Cohen. “Choosing NetApp was the best decision we could have made. The team has assisted us at every step along our digital transformation.”

Kobi CohenDirector of Solution Architecture, LATTO

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Story tWo

Moving a Global hr Management Solution to the cloud with Lift and Shift

have you heard of human Capital Management (hCM) software? It is used by enterprises around the world to manage people – how to find them, recruit them, and keep them.

For this hCM company, their problem was software demos. As a global leader in the hCM space, their sales team relied on demo software to make sales. But the software was not always available when or where the sales team was. Sometimes it was even the wrong version.

The company wanted their demo software to be always on and always available and cloud was the answer. Sales team in hong Kong? Demo available. Sales team at a client’s office? Demo available. Sales team in transit? Demo available.

Microsoft Azure – Cloud of ChoiceThe hCM company decided to move their application to Microsoft Azure. They took the lift-and-shift approach, which means moving the workload and the data as is, keeping the same organizational processes.

Cloud Volumes ONTAP for AzureThe client selected Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Azure due to its fixed capabilities and the tight Microsoft Active Directory integration, which the client already utilized on-premises.

Initially, two Cloud Volumes ONTAP instances were configured:

1. Production application

2. Disaster recovery copy

We love this architectural approach because it is simple, can be easily replicated in other regions, and, for other organizations that require global coverage, provides a fully redundant and protected workload.

Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Azure Lift and ShiftThe Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Azure lift-and-shift capabilities meant that the client quickly and efficiently moved their existing production environment to Microsoft Azure while maintaining all the functionality and processes they had on-premises. ONTAP OnCommand Cloud Manager orchestrated the entire process, which reduced risk and time-to-market.

WhAT IS ONTAP ONCOMMAND CLOuD MANAgER?

OnCommand Cloud Manager is the automation and orchestration process of your Cloud Volumes ONTAP system. It manages single cloud provisioning and allows you to have control of your entire environment in a single pane of glass, including hybrid or multi-cloud resources.

using OnCommand to manage Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Azure solution enables quick cloud onboarding. Along with the functions of Discover and Replicate, you can take your existing on-premises data and simply lift-and-shift it to the cloud, with a simple drag-and-drop operation. Easy. Done.

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In retail, pictures are everything. From the runways of Milan to online digital shopping, the consumer needs to see in order to buy.

Operating in 3,300 stores, 90 countries, and online with five separate fashion brands, this global retailer serves millions of customers.

Cloud-First for E-TailTo support the growth of their rapidly expanding online e-commerce business, this retailer has committed to cloud all the way, and Microsoft Azure is their platform. Why? Security, security, security.

The Microsoft Azure Active Directory B2C is a cloud identity service that retailers, governments, and enterprises worldwide rely on to serve applications to their citizens and customers, with fully customizable experiences, while protecting their identities at the same time. Built on Azure Active Directory, this highly secure cloud identity platform handles billions of authentications

per day and differentiates Azure from other public cloud providers.

With Azure holding down the security and identity management fort, this retailer now needed help managing the hi-res images and video that make sales happen and keep revenue flowing.

Managing Costs, Speed, and Efficiencies for Terabytes of DataThe challenge was to get images and video out of the cloud fast to meet time-to-market needs to ensure that the smallest footprint would be enabled to control costs.

With Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Azure, their IT department was able to comply with the business requirement for enterprise file services as they store and access dozens of terabytes of data almost daily in Microsoft Azure.

Reducing the Data FootprintIn this instance, the client started with two Cloud Volumes ONTAP licenses, and they expect to grow. This is where Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Azure brings tremendous value. Because their data is constantly growing, there is always the need to extend capacity.

With NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP, our storage efficiencies have helped this client reduce their footprint and ultimately reduce their costs. Features that our technology has perfected (we believe unlike any other data storage provider) include:

• thin provisioning

• data deduplication

• data compression

The results? This customer has a cloud-first strategy that is both manageable and cost effective.

Story three

picture perfect – how a Global retailer Manages Massive Stores of unstructured data in the cloud

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Story Four

agricultural chemical provider Builds disaster recovery Sites in the cloud

As one of the largest chemical solution providers in the agricultural sector, this client operates dozens of subsidiaries worldwide. Their main business challenge was to reduce their on-premises footprint, and that is why they adopted a cloud-first strategy.

Getting Started – The Road to Saving MillionsTo dramatically reduce costs and improve manageability, this client decided to replace all the physical DR sites. They selected Microsoft Azure along with Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Azure to manage it all.

Prove It (with a PoC)The client decided to begin with a PoC (Proof of Concept) at one of their locations in the uK.

By isolating their first instance, they were able to prove that the DR plan was solid, mitigate risk, and build a roll-out plan that could be executed globally.

The pilot proved out what this client hoped: that using Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Azure for Disaster Recovery would simply and easily replace their on-premises DR instances. This reduced cost and com-plexity, while extending their on-premises infrastructure with a single pane of glass management solution using OnCommand Manager and SnapMirror®

The result? Efficiencies, manageability, and fast replication of data.

WhAT IS SNAPMIRROR®?

If you are not already familiar with NetApp’s SnapMirror® replication technology, we want to introduce it now.

SnapMirror® is a very efficient feature for data mobility. After the first data copy, it moves only delta data. And that means delta data that is also compressed and deduplicated – extremely efficient replication.

SnapMirror® supports your hybrid environment and seamlessly moves data between your ONTAP Systems including cloud, on-premises, or other multi- source providers. SnapMirror® supports continuous synchronization according to your predefined schedule, making it an amazing tool for disaster recovery. It also enables quick-restore, at any point of time, guaranteeing quick fail-over and fail-back processes for business continuity.

Our clients tell us they love it - the same familiar replication technology feature that NetApp developed for on-premises is now available in the cloud.

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Story FIVe

Multi-national technology company – SMB3 / cIFS Storage for app dev

This company is a well-known brand - a multi-national technology company that develops and manufactures software products, services, and devices. Already an ONTAP customer for production workloads in their data center, they wanted to take private data center capacity and move it to the cloud to improve software production.

In this case, Development wanted to migrate their test data to the cloud.

Hundreds of Copies of Data for Testinghowever, they needed many copies of the data for development and testing.

In many cases, they needed to create hundreds of copies of their data for

automatic testing processes. They needed a copy creation process that would be both cost efficient and very, very quick.

For this client, their configuration includes five Cloud Volumes ONTAP instances. Not only have they increased the speed of their production processes, they are saving even more space than they anticipated.

More Workloads Going LiveMoving dev test has been so successful, they are expanding with additional application workloads being migrated onto Microsoft Azure using Cloud Volumes ONTAP.

WhY FLExCLONE®?

FlexClone is a unique NetApp feature that allows you to take a snapshot and make it a writable volume with zero capacity penalty, with almost zero time to create. So, it’s a writable copy but you are only paying only for the delta data you consume.

Super-useful for protecting environments and data and keeping your costs down at the same time.

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Story SIx

Fin Serve – platform to Serve time-to-Market needs

As one of the largest providers of residential mortgage and diversified financial services, this client competes for business on a broad scale. With more than 300 subsidiaries, they needed to access multiple stores of data to support existing business models as well as enable them to develop new products and services.

Compliance Needs Met By Microsoft Azure and Cloud Volumes ONTAP for AzureCorporate management decided to adopt a cloud-first strategy and migrate workloads to Azure. They selected Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Azure to supply their business unit with enterprise-grade capabilities that complied with their data protection requirements.

Because they operate with CIFS data shares, this configuration included six Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Azure instances, imple-mented in two subsidiaries, and leverages SnapShot technology across regions for near-instant recovery and disaster recovery.

OnCommand Cloud Manager is being used to automate both deployment and data migration and this is simply the start of their plan. They are expanding to their many other subsidiaries that are replicating this success with Microsoft Azure and Cloud Volumes ONTAP.

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Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Azure makes managing your data on this incredible public cloud platform incredibly easy, incredibly fast, and incredibly cost effective.

In ClosingWe are the Microsoft Cloud Product Marketing team here at NetApp and (no surprise) we believe that Microsoft Azure is probably the best public cloud for the enterprise today. Secure, reliable, and proven, Azure pays strict attention to the security and compliance issues that enterprises need and serves its clients from more data centers around the world than any other cloud provider. And while NetApp has partnerships and alliance teams for other public cloud companies, as you can tell, we are really bullish on Microsoft Azure.

As of this writing, Azure has reported triple-digit growth in revenues for the 14th straight quarter8. In a recent KeyBank

report, when comparing public cloud artificial intelligence tools, they have found that Microsoft has “more pre-built models than other public cloud vendors and makes them available from more data centers around the world.”9

More than that, Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Azure makes managing your data on this public cloud platform incredibly easy, incredibly fast, and incredibly cost effective.

And isn’t that what you really need? A great cloud provider coupled with a great set of data management tools so that you can do your best job ever.

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references

1 Become a Data Thriver: Realize Data-Driven Transformation, IDC Whitepaper

2 https://hbr.org/2013/11/blockbuster-becomes-a-casualty-of-big-bang-disruption

3 http://www.businessinsider.com/blockbuster-ceo-passed-up-chance-to-buy-netflix-for-50-million-2015-7

4 https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/22/netflix-is-now-worth-more-than-100b/

5 https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21721656-data-economy-demands-new-approach-antitrust-rules-worlds-most- valuable-resource

6 https://www.infoworld.com/article/3237566/cloud-computing/cloud-pricing-comparison-aws-vs-azure-vs-google-vs-ibm.html

7 IDC, Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker, 2017Q3, November 30, 2017

8 https://marketrealist.com/2018/03/how-microsofts-azure-performed-in-fiscal-2q18

9 https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/12/amazon-lost-cloud-market-share-to-microsoft-in-the-fourth-quarter-keybanc.html