Type Public Area served Worldwide Founded 1992 | Industry Storage device CEO George Kurian (Jun 2015–) Parent organization NetApp | |
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Traded as NASDAQ: NTAP
NASDAQ-100 Component
S&P 500 Component Key people George Kurian (CEO)
Mike Nevens (Chairman of the Board) Products Data storage hardware and software Headquarters Sunnyvale, California, United States Subsidiaries SolidFire, Engenio, Decru, NetApp, NetApp SAS Founders David Hitz, Michael Malcolm, James Lau Profiles | ||
NetApp, Inc. is an American multinational storage and data management company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. It is a member of the NASDAQ-100, and has ranked in the Fortune 500 since 2012. Founded in 1992 with an IPO in 1995, NetApp offers software, systems and services to manage and store data, including its proprietary Data ONTAP operating system.
Contents
Netapp company profile
History
NetApp was founded in 1992 by David Hitz, James Lau, and Michael Malcolm. At the time, its major competitor was Auspex Systems. In 1994, NetApp received venture capital funding from Sequoia Capital. It had its initial public offering in 1995. NetApp thrived in the internet bubble years of the mid 1990s to 2001, during which the company grew to $1 billion in annual revenue. After the bubble burst, NetApp's revenues quickly declined to $800 million in its fiscal year 2002. Since then, the company's revenue has steadily climbed.
In 2006, NetApp sold the NetCache product line to Blue Coat Systems. In 2014, NetApp acquired Riverbed Technology's SteelStore line of data backup and protection products, which it later renamed as AltaVault. On June 1, 2015, Tom Georgens stepped down as CEO and was replaced by George Kurian.
In December 2015 (closing in January 2016), NetApp acquired flash storage vendor SolidFire for $870 million.
Competition
NetApp competes in the computer data storage hardware industry. In 2009, NetApp ranked second in market capitalization in its industry behind EMC Corporation and ahead of Seagate Technology, Western Digital, Brocade, Imation, and Quantum. In total revenue of 2009, NetApp ranked behind EMC, Seagate, Western Digital, and ahead of Imation, Brocade, Xyratex, and Hutchinson Technology. According to a 2014 IDC report, NetApp ranked second in the network storage industry "Big 5's list", behind EMC(DELL), and ahead of IBM, HP and Hitachi.
Products
The line of NetApp filers has served as the company's flagship product from the very beginning. A filer is a type of disk-storage device which owns and controls a filesystem and presents files and directories to hosts over the network. This scheme is sometimes called network-attached storage, as opposed to the block storage which major storage vendors like IBM, EMC Corporation and Hitachi Data Systems have traditionally provided.
NetApp's filers initially used NFS and SMB protocols based on standard local area networks (LANs), whereas block storage consolidation required storage area networks (SANs) implemented with the Fibre Channel (FC) protocol. In 2002, in an attempt to increase market share, NetApp added block-storage access as well. As of 2016 NetApp systems support it via FC protocol, the iSCSI protocol and the emerging Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) protocol.
The filers use NetApp's proprietary operating system called Data ONTAP which includes code from Berkeley Net/2 BSD Unix, Spinnaker Networks technology and other operating systems. Data ONTAP originally only supported NFS, but later added support for SMB, iSCSI and Fibre Channel (including Fibre Channel over Ethernet). In June 16, 2006 NetApp provided two variants of Data ONTAP. Data ONTAP 7G and a nearly complete rewrite called Data ONTAP GX, based upon grid technology acquired from Spinnaker Networks. In 2010 these software product lines merged into one OS - Data ONTAP 8, which folded Data ONTAP 7G onto the Data ONTAP GX cluster platform. Data ONTAP 8 has two distinct operating modes - 7-Mode and Cluster-Mode.
NetApp's OnCommand management software controls and automates data-storage.
Syrian surveillance
In November 2011, during the 2011 Syrian uprising, NetApp was named as one of several companies whose products were being used in the Syrian government crackdown. The equipment was allegedly sold to the Syrians by an authorized NetApp reseller.
On April 7, 2014, NetApp was notified by the US Department of Commerce "that it had completed its review of this matter and determined that NetApp had not violated the U.S. export laws", and that the file on the matter had been closed.
Legal dispute with Sun Microsystems
In September 2007, NetApp started proceedings against Sun Microsystems, claiming that the ZFS File System developed by Sun infringed its patents. The following month, Sun announced plans to countersue based on alleged misuse by NetApp of Sun's own patented technology. Several of NetApp's patent claims were rejected on the basis of prior art after re-examination by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. On September 9, 2010, NetApp announced an agreement with Oracle Corporation (the new owner of Sun Microsystems) to dismiss the suits.
Accolades
NetApp was listed amongst Silicon Valley Top 25 Corporate Philanthropists in 2013.