Cloud Deployment Models
Business Wire | October 18, 2023
NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP), a global cloud-led, data centric software company, today announced their new joint Bare-Metal-as-a-Service (BMaaS) solution, NetApp Storage on Equinix Metal. NetApp Storage integrated with Equinix Metal is delivered as an as-a-service model through NetApp Keystone, which offers a real hybrid cloud experience—in a single subscription—so users can choose the storage capacity and performance they need without overprovisioning. Keystone® greatly reduces upfront costs with the flexibility to add more storage on demand as business needs dictate.
NetApp Storage on Equinix Metal provides customers with a full stack of compute, networking and storage infrastructure with low-latency interconnection to all major public clouds. This environment can be either single tenant or dedicated, and meets most stringent performance requirements, provides elasticity, and is packaged, priced, billed and supported under a single agreement.
Today’s rapid pace of cloud innovation enables companies to move more workload types to the hybrid multi-cloud more easily and in greater numbers than ever before, said Sandeep Singh, Senior Vice President and GM of Enterprise Storage at NetApp. NetApp is a leader in delivering native cloud and first-party solutions on all three major public clouds that provide a unified hybrid multicloud experience for customers. NetApp Storage on Equinix Metal further illustrates the industry value of our partnership and our collective commitment to providing as-a-service, hybrid multicloud solutions with higher performance, scalability, and simplified management.
Key benefits of NetApp Storage on Equinix Metal include:
Integrated Solution: NetApp Storage is fully integrated with Equinix Metal's infrastructure, ensuring a cohesive full stack experience for storage (file, block, and object), compute, and networking as-a-Service under a single subscription.
Cloud Adjacent: Customers can choose how they want to build their hybrid multicloud experience while maintaining control of their data in a low latency, high performance environment—on premises, in the cloud, or anywhere in between—on all three major public clouds.
Higher performance for demanding workloads: When NetApp Storage is combined with Equinix Metal's high-performance dedicated bare metal servers, users unlock fast data access, minimal latency, and the ability to handle the most demanding workloads with ease.
Scalable Capacity and Performance On-Demand: With NetApp Storage on Equinix Metal, customers can scale their storage resources as required to meet evolving business needs.
Superior Data Security: NetApp Storage delivers industry-leading encryption, ransomware, and security features, and enables customers to receive industry-leading physical and environmental security in an Equinix International Business Exchange (IBX) data center to help ensure customer data remains protected. NetApp’s proactive ransomware detection capabilities can identify potential cybersecurity threats and automatically perform an additional immutable back up of data if a threat is suspected.
Global Reach: Equinix's extensive global footprint lets users take advantage of NetApp Storage on Equinix Metal in Equinix IBX data centers across the world. As of June 2023, Equinix has a total of 250 IBX data centers globally in 71 metros with 26 Equinix Metal locations.
Simplified Management: NetApp's unified control plane for storage and data services provides customers with comprehensive control and visibility over their data no matter where it resides. Equinix Metal's automated provisioning platform further simplifies deployment and management.
“The growth of cloud adoption, the acceleration of AI, and the desire to derive real-time insights from data puts significant pressure on customers to optimize data management to gain a competitive advantage,” said Brian Stein, Senior Vice President, Edge Infrastructure Services at Equinix. “Achieving our goal of an integrated, full stack, solution is another milestone that provides enterprise customers low latency access to all clouds while keeping control of their data. This cloud adjacency helps transform how companies deploy applications, design their own solutions, and generate new revenue streams while simplifying operations and containing costs.”
NetApp Storage on Equinix Metal is a strategic expansion of NetApp’s Cloud strategy, adding a true hybrid multicloud experience. NetApp can now deliver the entire stack in Equinix IBX data centers outfitted with Equinix Metal. The solution provides an optimized connection to most major public clouds through local, high-speed connectivity through on ramps. On Equinix’s global dedicated bare metal equipment, users have full access to NetApp cloud services such as Cloud Volumes ONTAP.
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Cloud Security
PR Newswire | October 23, 2023
In the last decade, organizations have begun building and deploying cloud applications at an unprecedented pace, and there's no sign of slowing down. According to Gartner, 65% of application workloads will be optimized or ready for cloud delivery by 2027 — up from 45% in 2022.
Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ: PANW) today reimagined how enterprises approach cloud security with the industry's first integrated Code to Cloud intelligence introduced as part of the Prisma® Cloud Darwin release. Today marks a "Darwin moment" for cloud security as Prisma Cloud pushes organizations to evolve beyond single point solutions and adopt a holistic approach that provides a single source of truth.
While the cloud offers exceptional agility and efficiency, it introduces major security risks that have become increasingly widespread — 80% of security exposures are found in cloud environments, according to the company's Unit 42 Threat Intelligence team, which can result in large-scale breaches. These rising cloud attacks and the velocity of cloud application development are outpacing the speed at which security teams can protect their organizations.
Current approaches for code-to-cloud security are siloed, with the average organization relying on six to ten tools for securing cloud infrastructure alone. Having disparate security tools leads to an incomplete security posture and creates a massive operational burden for security teams. With its new Code to Cloud intelligence, Prisma Cloud — the industry's most complete cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) — offers a single trusted place that connects insights from the developer environment through application runtime for security teams to contextualize alerts and pinpoint remediations. This intelligence effectively prevents risk and stops breaches while enhancing the end-user experience and improving developer and security team collaboration.
"The only way to secure applications from code to cloud is by fending off risk from entering the development pipeline and preventing breaches of applications in production. This can only be achieved through an intelligent CNAPP platform like Prisma Cloud that gathers intelligence throughout the application lifecycle so security teams can precisely trace vulnerabilities and misconfigurations back to their origin in the source code. Prisma Cloud's Darwin release simplifies cloud security and improves productivity and collaboration across code, infrastructure, and runtime security."
Ankur Shah, senior vice president, Prisma Cloud, Palo Alto Networks
In many organizations, the ratio of developers to security professionals can be 100 to 1, resulting in understaffed teams. The current approach of working in silos does not guarantee comprehensive code to cloud security. This gap will widen as developers increasingly use AI to write and deploy code more quickly. Prisma Cloud, now with Code to Cloud intelligence, fosters collaboration between developers and security professionals by linking production security issues to specific remediation recommendations in code.
Melinda Marks, practice director, Enterprise Security Group, said:
"Today's reality is we face a cybersecurity skills shortage, especially in cloud security, while organizations are increasingly leveraging cloud services for faster application development to best serve customers and drive business results. At the same time, we have a rapidly evolving threat landscape increasingly targeting cloud workloads. So, it's crucial to invest in an effective security solution that supports increased development productivity from code to cloud to enable security teams to optimize security risk mitigation and protect their applications to enable business growth."
Chris Bogaards, vice president of IT security, Global Atlantic Financial Group, said:
"Our greatest challenge before Prisma Cloud was gaining clear visibility into what was occurring in our cloud applications and what security alerts to prioritize. Our developers freely create applications with a myriad of tools not knowing what risks they're introducing into the organization. With Prisma Cloud, we now have a simple, yet comprehensive view across our entire application portfolio to understand what vulnerabilities we have, which ones to prioritize and how to fix them." Watch Global Atlantic Financial Group's customer testimonial.
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Cloud App Management
iTWire | September 27, 2023
Dell Technologies today announced the availability of Dell Apex Cloud Platform for Microsoft, a new fully integrated turnkey system developed in collaboration with Microsoft that extends the Microsoft Azure hybrid cloud experience to data centre and edge environments.
It’s the first offer in the Dell Apex Cloud Platform family and the first available Premier Solution for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI. This new Azure Stack HCI solution category only includes platforms that provide fastest time to value for Azure hybrid cloud through the deepest levels of integration with Microsoft.
Dell Technologies and Microsoft have a long history of hybrid cloud innovation and collaboration to help customers deploy apps and data wherever they need them. Dell Apex Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure is the latest innovation to stem from our long collaboration, said Dell Technologies regional director Apex Asia Pacific and Japan Karolis Macionis.
“This new platform will enable organisations in the region to simplify their Azure management, accelerate application delivery, and offer flexibility to run their workloads across the cloud, edge, and data centre.”
Dell Apex Cloud platforms are next-generation infrastructure that deliver consistent operations and more control over workload placement by extending the choice of cloud ecosystem on-premises.
These platforms offer customers greater flexibility and investment protection over time by combining the best of Dell innovation in automated infrastructure management and orchestration, software-defined storage, and next-generation compute.
Simplifying Azure on-premises
The opportunity to extend Azure cloud services to on-premises environments is significant. According to an ESG study on multicloud application deployment trends, 48% of customers surveyed are expanding on-premises deployments. Dell Apex Cloud Platform for Azure provides an optimal way for customers to bring Microsoft Azure to their data centre and edge locations.
This new platform builds upon decades of Dell and Microsoft collaboration. It combines Dell’s expertise in delivering software-driven management and orchestration and software-defined storage with Microsoft’s leadership in cloud services and container orchestration.
“More of our customers are asking us to bring the power of Azure wherever they need it out in the real world, whether that is in their factories, retail stores, quick service restaurants, or distributed locations. Through our partnership with Dell, we can project just enough Microsoft Azure to those locations at the edge,” said Azure Edge + Platform corporate vice president Douglas Phillips.
“This new solution gives our mutual customers a seamless experience from cloud to edge, wherever their data lives, so they can spend less time managing infrastructure and focus more on transforming their business.”
Enhancing Azure hybrid cloud
The Dell Apex Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure is designed to address several key IT priorities.
Simplify management: This new offer delivers consistent Azure operations across on-premises locations and public cloud via native integration with Azure Arc. Deep integration and extensive automation enabled by Dell’s APEX Cloud Platform Foundation Software would deliver greater benefits to customers compared to past solutions. For example, the automated deployment wizard results in an 88% reduction in deployment steps compared to existing integrated systems, allowing customers to save more time when deploying the platform.
Accelerate application delivery: Through optimised delivery of Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) hybrid, and Arc-enabled app and data services, the platform helps accelerate application delivery. Customers will be able to simplify management with deep integration and familiar tools. Users can also enforce consistent security and compliance policies across the Azure landscape through integration with centralised Azure management and governance services.
Fastest time to value: To ensure customers get the fastest time to value and ongoing full stack support, Dell ProSupport Infrastructure Suite provides a single source of solution level-support for Dell hardware, system software, and Azure HCI. Onsite diagnosis, residency, data migration, data disposition, and education services cover tasks commonly required in a multicloud environment, allowing internal staff to focus on other priorities.
Going above and beyond
While the new Premier Solutions for Azure Stack HCI category represents the highest level of required automation, integration, and collaboration with Microsoft, Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure takes this even further.
Lifecycle management: Dell Apex Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure delivers near instantaneous availability of new releases and patches - within just four hours of a Microsoft release. Single-pane, full-stack lifecycle management ensures the complete infrastructure stack always remains compliant.
Unique automation: The platform provides automated cluster expansion, enabling rapid addition of on-premises infrastructure to meet workload requirements.
Edge offerings coming soon: The specialised nodes based on the Dell PowerEdge XR4000 edge-optimised server platform to help customers extend Azure to the edge while minimising cost, footprint, and complexity.
Ultimate flexibility coming soon: Dell Technologies will support additional storage configurations with Dell software-defined storage, making it the only offer to support linear scaling of storage resources independently from compute resources, helping customers address workloads with diverse performance, and scaling needs.
Meeting customer and partner needs
Dell has heard overwhelming excitement about this solution from customers and partners alike. Kyndryl, a strategic partner of Dell and Microsoft, is expanding its solutions with managed services for this platform.
“In a rapidly changing IT landscape, Kyndryl is helping customers modernise their mission-critical environments to a hybrid cloud operating model. As a strategic alliance partner with Dell and Microsoft, we are excited for the availability of the new Dell Apex Cloud Platform that will provide a consistent Azure operation across on-premises and Azure public cloud,” said Kyndryl vice president private cloud services Kevin Powell. “We are committed to delivering services that help customers utilise the latest industry technology innovations from our ecosystem partners to deliver leading edge hybrid cloud solutions.”
Through customer conversations, Dell is seeing existing customers familiar with the operational outcomes delivered by its automated software are excited to adopt the Apex Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure to extend their Azure deployments on-premises.
“More than 5,000 organisations around the world look to LoopUp to help them bring global communications to the cloud to support flexible work, increase productivity, simplify complexity, and reduce cost,” said LoopUp vice president of network operations Chris Stanley. “Dell Apex Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure’s deep software integration and lifecycle management will help us scale and deliver cloud telephony innovations faster and get the most value from our Azure hybrid deployment.”
Orange Business, another strategic partner for Dell and Microsoft, is also excited about the transformative power Dell Apex Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure could hold for their customers.
“As organisations increasingly turn to hybrid cloud strategies to help power digital experiences for their employees and customers, they need an efficient solution to easily manage it all from edge to core data centres to public cloud,” said Orange business marketing director of digital services Olivier Ménez. “Dell Apex Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure includes deep integrations and automation that will help us easily build and manage our customers’ data and applications in hybrid environments.”
Delivering hybrid cloud innovation
Dell’s customers can now get their hands on Dell Apex Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure to see first-hand how it can help them unleash innovation by simplifying the Azure hybrid experience.
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