The storage industry, as with much of the technology sector as a whole, is powered by collaboration. Vendors, partners and customers all have to work together to create the best possible products for real business scenarios. What makes a great partnership within the industry is the same as what makes a great partnership between individuals – that the overall result is more than the sum of its parts. Through the sharing of insights, expertise and solutions, partners, vendors and customers all stand to benefit.
At NetApp, we know our partner community is fundamental to our success as a business. That’s why we believe in being partner-first. NetApp has over 400 authorised partners in our network across the UK&I, who help us every day to provide our customers with exemplary solutions and services to meet their storage needs. Nowhere was this more evident than during the UK rollout of our Backup as a Service (BaaS) offering, where Daisy and Node4 joined us as launch partners. Together, we will provide businesses with state-of-the-art storage technology without any additional hardware investment.
[easy-tweet tweet=”One of the key themes for our BaaS launch is that of digital transformation.” hashtags=”BaaS, Digital “]
One of the key themes for our BaaS launch is that of digital transformation. It is a topic that is on the tip of every business’s tongue – but what is seldom discussed is the pivotal role that partners play in making this a reality. For large vendors like NetApp, it would be challenging to go out alone and make customer’s dreams of quick, easy transformation into a reality. The technology industry is getting more complex by the day, and partners are the experts in helping customers navigate through the chaos – after all, at the end of the day, customers don’t want to have lengthy discussions with vendors about their potential solution, they just want someone to make it happen. A partner infrastructure provides customers with exactly this service.
Furthermore, for a customer, a partner is key for helping them to make the most out of their solution. In the storage industry, our customers want to achieve the best ROI for their investment – which means getting the best speeds and storing the most data in the most efficient way. Our partners work closely with use to understand the potential of our technology and translate this expertise to the customer.
As a result of our close collaboration, our partners are able to take our product offering and build on it to create more tailored, service-based solutions that match the exact needs of their customers, even within specific verticals such as finance, healthcare and manufacturing. Building on their nuanced expertise, our collaboration can develop truly transformative infrastructure solutions that can support businesses on their digital transformation journey.
Partners don’t just help customers, they help vendors grow as a business. In an industry that changes every single day, and new customer requirements just around the corner, partners form a vital link in helping NetApp stay ahead of the curve in understanding what businesses really want. At the same time, we can provide them with our expertise in identifying areas of rapid growth, and help them to make the most of the high growth sectors such as Flash, cloud and converged infrastructure.
The value of a partnership comes in its ability to offer a multitude of benefits – learning opportunities, sales opportunities and growth opportunities – to all its participants. With the launch of our BaaS proposition, in conjunction with our partners and their customers, NetApp is harnessing our network’s combined expertise to provide outstanding IT services that meet the challenges that business experience along with their path to digital transformation.
Laurence James, Products, Alliances and Solutions Marketing Manager, NetApp NEMEA
Laurence is responsible for driving market awareness for NetApp’s products across Northern EMEA. Working closely with the EMEA Product, Alliances and Solutions Marketing team, his focus is on business growth and aligning NetApp’s offerings with customer and market needs.
Laurence works across all of NetApp’s product areas, and has an in-depth understanding of diverse customer requirements to deliver value across the entire range of the product suite. Leading the marketing activities, Laurence is responsible for ensuring that NetApp’s offering is market-leading, of the highest standard and guarantees customer ROI.
Working with a dedicated and experienced team, he assists in developing and implementing marketing campaigns that support the positioning of NetApp’s products and its reputation.
Laurence has many years’ experience working with all aspects of Enterprise IT and held roles at Oracle, Sun Microsystems and StorageTek.