Full Description

NetApp, Inc. (NetApp), incorporated in April 1992, is a provider of storage and data management solutions. The Company offers solutions for storing, managing, protecting and archiving business data. The Company is engaged in the design, manufacturing, marketing and technical support of networked storage solutions. It offers storage solutions that incorporate its unified storage platform and the functionality of the data and storage resource management software. NetApp markets its products in the United States and in foreign countries through its sales personnel and subsidiaries. NetApp focuses on the data management and storage markets, offering an array of solutions from its high-end products designed for large enterprise customers to entry level products designed for mid-sized enterprise customers. The Company sells its products and services to end users through a direct sales force, value-added resellers, system integrators, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and distributors.

Data ONTAP Software

The Company’s Fabric-Attached Storage (FAS) and V-Series storage solutions are based on Data ONTAP, an operating system that supports any mix of storage area network (SAN), network-attached storage (NAS) and Internet protocol SAN (IP SAN) environments concurrently. This unified storage software platform integrates into UNIX, Linux, Windows and Web environments. The Data ONTAP operating system provides the foundation to build a storage infrastructure and a data fabric for business applications. Data ONTAP GX, the Company’s operating system, supports integrated, multi-node storage systems within a single global name space. This storage grid architecture provides the ability to add storage resources and redistribute data to client systems.

Data Management Software

NetApp’s products are used in data centers. These environments require enterprise-class management tools. The Company provides management software. Such tools include FlexVol technology, FlexClone technology, Deduplication technology, FlexShare technology, FlexCache technology and MultiStore software.

Storage Management and Application Integration Software

The Company’s management software family of products provides a range of storage and data management tools to simplify information technology (IT) administration. NetApp has four suites of products targeted to different IT administrative roles: Storage Suite, Server Suite, Database Suite and Application Suite.

FAS Family

NetApp’s family of unified networked storage systems provides access to a range of enterprise data for users on a variety of platforms. The FAS 6000, FAS 3000 and the FAS 2000 series of fabric-attached enterprise storage systems are designed to consolidate UNIX, Windows, NAS, Fibre Channel (FC), Internet Small Computer Systems Interface (iSCSI), SAN and Web data in central locations running over the standard connection types, including Gigabit Ethernet, FC and parallel SCSI (for backup).

V-Series Family

The Company’s V-Series is a network-based virtualization solution that consolidates storage arrays from different suppliers behind its data management interface, providing SAN and NAS access to data stored in heterogeneous storage arrays. The V-Series is compatible with the FAS family of storage systems.

VTL Data Protection Systems

The Company’s Virtual Tape Library (VTL) solution is a disk-to-disk backup appliance that appears as a tape library to a backup software application, but provides the speed and reliability of disk technologies. Its VTL is a system that can be used in any heterogeneous primary storage environment.

Data Protection Software Products

NetApp offers a range of business continuance and disk backup solutions for enterprise customer environments. The Company’s Snapshot technology enables online backups of data sets. MetroCluster, SnapMirror, SyncMirror and SnapRestore products provide a level of data availability. SnapVault, Open Systems SnapVault and SnapVault for NetBackup products provide network and storage-optimized disk-to-disk backup solutions.

Data Retention and Archive Products

The Company offers a suite of products to help enable data permanence, accessibility and privacy across a variety of different regulations, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 21 CFR Part 11, SEC Rule 17a-4 and HIPAA. Storage architectures can be created utilizing SnapLock products.

Storage Security Products

The Company’s DataFort storage security appliance provides a unified platform for data security and key management across NAS, IP SAN, FC SAN and tape backup environments. The platform combines wire-speed encryption, access controls, authentication and automated key management to provide security for data at rest, while still allowing the capability to search compliant data for legal discovery purposes if the need arises.

Performance Acceleration Module

The NetApp Performance Acceleration Module (PAM) optimizes the performance of random read intensive workloads, such as file services and messaging. NetApp created this read cache.

The Company competes with EMC, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, IBM Corporation, Sun Microsystems and Dell, Inc.