Today's midsize enterprises face many of the same IT challenges as their larger counterparts, but often lack the same level of resources needed to adequately address them. As part of their ongoing strategic partnership, NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) and VMware (NYSE: VMW) today announced a new solution for midsize enterprises that helps them consolidate and virtualize their Windows® environments to deliver enterprise-class IT as a service.

News Facts

• NetApp and VMware are enabling midsize enterprises to deliver a new solution for Windows consolidation that improves productivity and scalability for midsize enterprises while significantly reducing IT costs.
• Customers can use the NetApp^® FAS family and VMware vSphere^™ to deliver application-aware data protection and disaster recovery technologies that were previously limited to a handful of midsize customers, helping them achieve enterprise-class availability for their Windows environments.
• Customers can also use NetApp Virtual Storage Console and VMware vCenter^™ Server to deliver integrated management for enhanced visibility, helping them respond faster to unplanned downtime and boost productivity.

Solution Detail

• Consolidation: Helps midsize enterprises eliminate application, data, and infrastructure sprawl and increase software utilization by cutting the physical servers needed by 80 percent and slashing the amount of storage needed in half. Server resources are pooled, and storage consumption is minimized with technologies such as thin provisioning, FlexClone^®, primary storage deduplication, and space-efficient Snapshot^™ backups.
• Management: Helps midsize enterprises simplify management and reduce overhead by 50 percent or more by automating common tasks and by leveraging our tightly integrated, intuitive tools. NetApp Virtual Storage Console with VMware vCenter Server plug-in performs intuitive storage management tasks to simplify provisioning, configuration of default best practices, and other storage tasks down to a few mouse clicks.
• Protection: Helps midsize enterprises cost-effectively increase availability and uptime through easy application-aware backup and disaster recovery, simple restores, and quick application failover, testing, and integration through the NetApp SnapManager^® suite of products and security and business continuity solutions from VMware, including VMware vShield™, VMware High Availability, VMware Fault Tolerance and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager. For example, SnapManager for Microsoft^® Exchange can be used to restore an individual user's mailbox.
• Scalability: Helps midsize enterprises scale to meet evolving business needs with efficient virtual servers and unified storage that can enable changes to be made to Windows applications and infrastructure within minutes.

Supporting Quotes

• Jim Owens, president, CEO and CIO, CARCO (Customer)
  "CARCO stores more than 40 million documents and images for our clients, so availability, backup, and performance are all critical requirements for our infrastructure. In addition, as a midsize enterprise we're constantly looking to do more with less and need to be able to scale as we grow. With the combination of NetApp storage and VMware virtualization, we've enabled a flexible infrastructure completely virtualized on NetApp storage, enabling us to implement an advanced disaster recovery capability and saving us more than $1 million over the past three years. CARCO wouldn't be able to do what we're doing, or be the company we are today, without NetApp and VMware solutions."
  
  
• Chris Pyle, president and CEO, Champion Solution Group (Channel Partner)
  "Many of our midmarket customers run standalone applications, which was acceptable in the past. However, with increasing data growth, budget pressures, and reliance on IT, these customers need solutions that scale and help them manage their business needs. We are excited that NetApp and VMware are delivering solutions specifically for the midsized enterprise, enabling us to help these customers consolidate and optimize their Windows environments."
  
  
• Brian Garrett, vice president, ESG Lab, Enterprise Strategy Group
  "Organizations of all sizes are struggling to keep up with data growth, keep costs in check, and increase the availability of Microsoft business applications in virtualized environments. Exploding data growth, in part due to virtual server sprawl, is driving IT managers to carefully consider how they meet the storage needs of virtualized applications. As a result, improving data backup and recovery, managing data growth, and data center consolidation are top IT priorities. In a recent ESG Lab Validation, we found the combination of NetApp unified storage and VMware virtualization is a sound foundation that's ideally suited for Windows consolidation."
  
  
• Gary Green, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware
  "Like large organizations, midsize enterprises are looking for ways to improve productivity and lower IT costs while delivering IT as a service that delivers higher availability through automation and simplified management. As part of our strategic partnership, VMware and NetApp are committed to bringing enterprise-class functionality to the midmarket, helping these customers maintain critical service levels while enabling future growth to meet changing business demands."
  
  
• Patrick Rogers, vice president of Solutions and Alliances, NetApp
  "Midsize customers continue to grapple with IT complexities and inefficiencies that can affect their bottom line. Working together, NetApp and VMware are committed to helping midsize enterprises evolve to an efficient IT infrastructure that enables them to be nimble, manage change and capitalize on opportunities while better aligning IT with the business."
  
  

Availability
The NetApp and VMware products needed for this new Windows consolidation solution are currently available and can be purchased directly from NetApp and VMware, or through the companies' worldwide network of value-added authorized solution providers, distributors and systems integrators. For more information, visit www.netapp.com/midsize or www.vmware.com/solutions/smb/smb_home.html.

Additional Resources

• Case study: "CARCO Delivers Higher Customer Satisfaction and Saves $1 Million with NetApp": www.netapp.com/us/library/customer-stories/carco.html
  
  
• ESG Lab Validation Report: Unified Windows Storage Consolidation:
  www.netapp.com/us/library/analyst-reports/ar-esg-unified-wsc-201008.html
  
  
• NetApp and VMware Solution Tracks: www.netappsolutiontracks.com/
  
  
• NetApp and VMware Tech Talk -- Lower Your Windows IT Costs:
  http://communicate.netapp.com/forms/verify?seminarID=20091008WOD&REF_SOURCE=TTsite
  
  
• White paper: "Consolidate and Virtualize Your Windows Environment with NetApp and VMware": www.netapp.com/us/library/white-papers/wp-7086.html
  
  
• Follow NetApp on twitter at //twitter.com/netapp and NetAppVirt at //twitter.com/netappvirt
  
  
• Follow VMware on twitter at //twitter.com/VMware and VMware Partners at //twitter.com/VMware_Partners
  
  

About NetApp
NetApp creates innovative storage and data management solutions that accelerate business breakthroughs and deliver outstanding cost efficiency. Discover our passion for helping companies around the world go further, faster at www.netapp.com.

About VMware
VMware delivers virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions that enable IT organizations to energize businesses of all sizes. With the industry leading virtualization platform -- VMware vSphere™ -- customers rely on VMware to reduce capital and operating expenses, improve agility, ensure business continuity, strengthen security and go green. With 2009 revenues of $2 billion, more than 190,000 customers and 25,000 partners, VMware is the leader in virtualization which consistently ranks as a top priority among CIOs. VMware is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the world and can be found online at www.vmware.com.

NetApp, the NetApp logo, Go further, faster, FlexClone, SnapManager, and Snapshot are trademarks or registered trademarks of NetApp, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. VMware, VMware vCenter, VMware vShield, and VMware vSphere are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. The use of the word "partner" or "partnership" does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company. The use of the word "partner" or "partnership" does not imply a legal partnership relationship between NetApp and any other company. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such. Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such.

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Press Contacts:
Sarah Tolle
NetApp
(408) 822-7986
sarah.tolle@netapp.com
Nick Fuentes
VMware
650-427-1104
nfuentes@vmware.com