Las Vegas NetApp today introduced a storage subscription service called Keystone.
NetApp Keystone is an umbrella offering, covering on-premises and public cloud deployments, and both customer-managed, NetApp or partner-managed systems.
Keystone brings NetApp up to date with the big storage industry trend to move to subscription billing. Prominent examples include Nutanix and HPE’s Greenlake service.
At first sight, Greenlake looks the most similar service in concept and scope to NetApp Keystone. How they compare depends on detailed pricing terms – and NetApp is not revealing these yet.
The company is also simplifying how customers deal with NetApp when obtaining its storage gear and services. Any NetApp service will be available under Keystone.
Under Keystone customers can buy NetApp products, subscribe to them or choose metered usage. Subscription and metered billing are called cloud-like in the slide above. Customers can mix and match purchases and subscriptions.
Keystone offers the ability to burst to the cloud from on-premises. It’s starting with NetApp’s new systems, the A400, FAS8300 and FAS8700.
NetApp services that are obtained in the public cloud are available on AWS, Azure and GCP. Utility pricing is offered with zero commitment.
NetApp emphasises the simpler process involved with three steps; choose from three performance tiers, then from three storage types, and finishing up with the management style, as in the slide above.
It says there are performance and efficiency guarantees available, plus flat and predictable support pricing. Customers can migrate workloads to NetApp environments in the public cloud under the Keystone umbrella, or even repatriate them.
