NetApp gets SaaSy with new monitoring service

NetApp has taken another step towards becoming a cloud services vendor with the debut of its new Cloud Insights product.

Announced at its annual Insight conference, Cloud Insight is the cloudy offspring of OnCommand Insight, the on-premises IT infrastructure monitoring tool NetApp has offered for some time. OnCommand is on-premises software that observes on-premises infrastructure and warns of performance issues that could disrupt an application or business process.

Cloud Insights does the same, but is delivered-as-a-service and can now also watch infrastructure-as-a-service rigs and the applications running inside them, so that users get one view of infrastructure across their own data centres and the Amazon, Microsoft and Google clouds.

On-prem users of NetApp storage arrays will be offered a free cut of the service that monitors the company’s storage kit, but nothing else until they start paying.

The company’s partners will be offered the chance for their cut of subscription revenue based on end-users consumption, plus what NetApp expects is a boost to their hybrid cloud credentials.

Partners may beg to differ as cloud management and monitoring is becoming a crowded space: CA, VMware, BMC, New Relic, Pager Duty and many others all claim they have expertise in the field. NetApp’s betting that its presence in many on-prem data centres makes a difference and confers it with unusual hybrid cloud cunning that buyers will recognise and therefore adopt Cloud Inisghts.

That’s not an entirely fanciful plan because another of the announcements from the conference was expanded access to Cloud Volumes for AWS, software that lets NetApp storage span on-prem and virtual volumes in AWS. NetApp can do the same in Azure. Cloud Volumes for AWS is now available in AWS’ Sydney region.

The service has also been enhanced with features said to better support DevOps, notably a REST API.

The company’s also signalled it would soon offer backup tools to protect data stored in big SaaS applications, starting with Salesforce and Office 365. A cloud backup service is also in the works.

Once those services debut, together with Cloud Insights they'll represent a decent SaaS portfolio. CRN understands there's more such services in the works too, as NetApp adds revenue sources beyond on-premises hardware.