Spoke to the fine folks at Cloudtenna. Their thing:
Cloudtenna is the first platform to generate augmented intelligence on top of your existing file repositories. The Direct Content Intelligence (DirectCI) agent uses deep machine learning to identify the files most relevant to each individual user, ushering in a new era of secure intelligent search, file sharing, and communications solutions for modern businesses.
Actually, they do way more than that, enabling much more intelligent and flexible use of cloud resources. For example, they also provide auditing capabilities that look at file usage, a hot area for a number of vendors.
Cloudtenna has just cut agreements with NetApp and Nutanix to enhance their cloud integration. That a tired legacy vendor and a hot new vendor both signed with Cloudtenna shows the value of their solution.
But it shows something else: cloud integration is now a customer requirement. Table stakes, if you will.
The StorageMojo take
This is what the storage industry has come to: embracing the enemy that is ripping the guts out of your business – at least in the case of NetApp and other legacy vendors. Since the Nutanix technology model is closely aligned with cloud cost structures, they can be magnanimous.
For decades, storage was the vendor cash cow that just kept on giving. And a lot of folks still think that way. NetApp’s gross margins haven’t budged from 60%+ even while they’ve laid off thousands.
Local storage still has a latency and (perhaps) a security advantage over the cloud. But it’s pretty obvious those advantages are shrinking. So what’s a NetApp to do? At best, a long, slow glide into oblivion.
Courteous comments welcome, of course.
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