| | October 20159CIOReview24 x 7 x 365 service needs. What seems cheap to rent becomes expensive when fixed. At NetApp, we view the cloud as simply another resource. A Data Fabric powered by NetApp allows you to integrate the cloud into a common data management framework that provides efficient transport and software-defined management of all your storage resources. If you have unpredictable workloads that you want to burst into the cloud, hyperscale public clouds are great. But if you have predictable, repeatable demand, then building your own cloud with all the functionality and agility of a commodity cloud provider starts to look attractive. Baylor College of Medicine is a leading institution that leveraged our FlexPod platform to build a private cloud that made infrastructure easier to access. Baylor's private cloud, appropriately named "Discovery Cloud," enhanced the institution's research with easy-to-use, on-demand, self-service IT and saved $1.5 million in hardware costs.NetApp's new OpenStack Solution Kit is an integrated management package that lets you get up and running on an OpenStack private cloud in days, with predictable costs and without the typical design and implementation risk. OpenStack offers a new economic model for the private cloud because it is an open source cloud operating system, much like Linux is an open source operating system for servers. An added benefit of the NetApp Data Fabric is performance--which differentiates it from what the cloud has to offer. One thing you can't get from the cloud today is any sort of guaranteed performance. The cloud is essentially a collection of loosely federated, shared systems consisting of hundreds and thousands of nodes across multiple geographies.Protecting Your Precious DataAsk any customer about putting data in the cloud and the first question is always around security. There is no doubt that data location is the most strategic cloud decision because data is the only element that transcends the transactional nature of the cloud. It is not fast or free to move and ownership or loss has long-standing consequences.But not all data is critically sensitive and not all IT organizations are able to deliver fast restores that can be critical to a business. Many businesses are looking at backup as an area that could be outsourced to the cloud. This elevates the need for mature data management services that form part of the Data Fabric vision. BlackLine, a leading provider of applications that automate and control the entire financial close process, is an example of one of our customers that enjoys seamless control of its data in and out of the cloud, due in part to a Data Fabric enabled by NetApp that leverages the NetApp Data ONTAP operating system.NetApp's Snap-to-Cloud DR Data Fabric Solution Essentials Kit was designed for the customer that wants to leverage the cloud for backup and DR of less critical data where high probability restores are the highest priority. With Cloud ONTAP, Snap-to-Cloud is available today with a 30-day free trial on Amazon. Snap-to-Cloud lets you experience the power of the Data Fabric in a specific case. If you wish to expand to more general cases, the Data Fabric enables that.While the Data Fabric Solution Essentials provide blueprints on how to get started with the cloud, the Data Fabric is designed to allow customers to choose the path that's right for them. Navigating these choices is the hard part and we can help you with that too. Our experienced consultants and technical staff are ready to help you design and deploy the options you choose. A Data Fabric powered by NetApp allows you to integrate the cloud into a common data management framework that provides efficient transport and software-defined management of all your storage resources
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