NetApp INSIGHT 2024 | Haiyan Song, NetApp

Clips
News
More from NetApp INSIGHT 2024

Haiyan Song

EVP, Intelligent Services

NetApp

Optimizing hybrid cloud: NetApp’s strategy for intelligent data management

As businesses grapple with the complexities of hybrid cloud management, a growing focus has emerged on optimizing data infrastructure for greater visibility and efficiency.Companies are increasingly adopting intelligent data services that integrate multicloud solutions, enhance ransomware protection and streamline infrastructure management. These innovations are reshaping IT environments, pushing enterprises toward scalable, resilient infrastructures that maximize data value while maintaining security and control

play_circle_outline NetApp's evolution towards intelligence data infrastructure and intelligent services

play_circle_outline Importance of partnership with cloud providers for better intelligence systems

play_circle_outline Revolutionizing Data Infrastructure with Workload Intelligence and Complete Visibility in Transition to Cloud Insight

play_circle_outline Improving Customer Experience: Hybrid Cloud Integration and Security in Cloud Operating Model

Info
Transcript

Haiyan Song, NetApp

Haiyan Song

EVP, Intelligent Services NetApp

NetApp's EVP of cloud operations, Haiyen Song, discusses the integration of intelligent services into the company's vision for an intelligent data infrastructure. The focus is on bringing intelligence to infrastructure operations and optimizing data management for various cloud environments. NetApp's partnerships with cloud providers ensure seamless integration and added value for customers. The company addresses key customer pain points such as data management, hybrid cloud integration, AI, and security measures. Haiyen Song emphasizes the importance of secu... Read more

explore Keep Exploring

What role do intelligent services play in the vision of intelligence data infrastructure? add

What is unique about NetApp's partnership with hyperscalers and integrating ONTAP technology into cloud consoles? add

What prompted the decision to change the name of the product from OCI to Cloud Insight, and what benefits are customers experiencing as a result of this change? add

What are some of the challenges customers face when dealing with data integration and hybrid cloud solutions? add

bolt Powered by CUBE AI

Haiyan Song, NetApp

search

Rebecca Knight

>> Hello everyone, and welcome back to theCUBE's Live coverage of NetApp INSIGHT 2024. We are live in Las Vegas. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, alongside my co-host and analyst, Rob Strechay. Rob, we have a lot of conversations here about how companies are trying to figure out how to make the most of their cloud technology, but really what we're learning here today is that the success depends on how your infrastructure is running.

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah, and it all has to be about the intelligence of that infrastructure, the intelligent data infrastructure that we've been talking about so far this week. So I think this is a great place to go because part of that is the visibility, manageability and how these data services all work together.

Rebecca Knight

>> So to talk about all of that and more, I would like to welcome Haiyen Song. She is the EVP of cloud operations here at NetApp. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

>> Thank you for having me, and I'm so glad to be part of this and back to theCUBE.

Rebecca Knight

>> Yes, you are an illustrious CUBE alum. Great job on the main stage this morning. I want to talk to you about how NetApp's approach to intelligent services is evolving to help customers manage their data and their infrastructure for their entire IT environment.

>> Well, first of all, you mentioned the word intelligence data infrastructure, right?

Rebecca Knight

>> The buzzword of this conference.

Rebecca Knight

>> The buzzword of this conference, and that's also the vision that we're articulating as we continue to innovate and evolve and expand our portfolio. So some of our customers know that last year we were here talking about NetApp CloudOps. And the evolution is amazing because it's not just CloudOps. It's not just a standalone portfolio. Now it's really part of the intelligent services, and we don't just think what do we do with cloud? We think about the entire data infrastructure, multicloud, hybrid and all those great things. And particularly, I am excited that in the vision of intelligence data infrastructure, the intelligent services play a key role, a key role to bring the intelligence to the operations of the infrastructure, a key role to get the best value out of the data. And you probably heard us talk about all the new releases, capabilities around ransomware, real-time and data recovery for ransomware, that sometimes protection is important, recovery is even harder. And on the side of infrastructure and workload, working with the most demanding and critical workload requires a lot of infrastructure.

Rob Strechay

>> I think, again, it took me back. Your presentation took me back to when I was at NetApp, and I think again on both sides of it, when you look at the ransomware and how AI is enabling it to be protected better, quicker, detecting, remediating, protecting all of that and bringing it all together, but also having the visibility, we called it ML, not AI back in the day and we're talking-

>> I remember those days.

Rob Strechay

>> Yes, it's funny how things that are old are new again, but I think again, you had some great I think things from the stage this morning and where you were talking about how you're looking at optimizing and efficiencies. Why don't you go down that path and what you've announced and how that's really going to help organizations gain that advantage?

>> I'll take a very top of mind thing to talk about. We know VM Estate is one of the hot topics given all the changes in the industry in that area. And one of the things we did in our latest release of data infrastructure insight, I think you know it.

Rob Strechay

>> Yes.

>> You know the two generations of that product from OCI to Cloud Insight. One of the focus is really how do we help customers have a better understanding of their VMware deployment or their VM Estate, and how do we give them the intelligence and insight to say, "Well, how can you just change your deployment, maybe just optimize the count of the host and core so you can save on licensing costs?" But that's only one part. I think what's more exciting for me is we're teaming up with the aSa series team to say not only how to save money, but how do you deploy it in the most optimal way you can get the best value out of our latest innovation? That's one example of intelligence services truly provide the optimization. There's also a general optimization work we do in the broader portfolio. In order to optimize, you got to understand. So having observability, whether it's for the infrastructure, for the cost of the infrastructure, for the nature of the workload, and coming with open source as well because that's a new frontier to get all those insights. So we really try to add our infrastructure and workload services portfolio to bring that visibility, bring that intelligence so we can optimize the right infrastructure adapted for the workloads because nothing is static.

Rebecca Knight

>> One thing that's so clear walking around here on the show floor is just how powerful and strong NetApp's ecosystem is, and we know that the ecosystem, the partners are so critical to success. How does your close relationship with cloud partners help you offer better intelligence systems?

>> This is so unique for NetApp because everybody can offer things on the cloud and everybody think, gosh, we can just buy the solutions from different vendors, and that not everybody realized that you already have a lot of your enterprise data that's stored on-prem and in great technologies like ONTAP and others. So our partnership with the hyperscalers, it's so unique that we were able to build those power of ONTAP into cloud, but not as a third party only, and we integrated into their very native consoles and things. If a customer have the choice to choose a technology they love and they're familiar with and without the power and without having to jump out of what they're familiar with in the cloud console and use them, I think that's an example of that tight relationship we have and the value we can bring the customer, the simplicity, that transparency. But that's just the beginning. I think I talk about how AVS, the Azure's VMware Rapid Migration Program and we're bringing a slew of solutions together, or our data infrastructure insight for telemetry or Spot ECO for reservation management and really teaming up to help customers on that journey.

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah, I think again, to me it was also punctuated by the fact that you said it's about data, hence the name change and things of that nature where data is at the forefront of what you're talking about. Help us understand, because I thought that was a great vision that you laid out for people earlier on how it's not just about, you showed what used to be OCI and before that Onero and now cloud. So it's gone through all of its different things, which was really great to see that people still can get that visibility, but it's also about because the connection to the data and how the data gets to where it needs to be.

>> Right.

Rob Strechay

>> Talk about why the name change and data at the forefront there.

>> I mean, you heard George. We live in the era of data and intelligence, and for us, you actually have more history on this than I do. When it was OCI, people loved it. We still have customers loving it and using it, and we moved it to Cloud Insight as a name. It's really telling customers now we want to deliver all this greatness from the cloud, but some customers taking the new name and say, "Hey, do you do on-prem anymore?" So we thought, hey, with the whole intelligence data infrastructure vision, why don't we properly match the name with the actions and the value this product already support? So we support the entire data infrastructure, not only NetApp technology and what some of customer love is the heterogeneous environment because I don't know any customers who only use one technology solution. So it's important to be holistic and systematic because when it comes to troubleshooting, you want to know the whole thing. You cannot be siloed and that will take forever. So the ability to reduce mean time to resolution is a big value that we bring to this. And when it comes to data, I actually use another word to describe how data and infrastructure connect to them is the workloads, and that's why workload intelligence, workload optimization are super cool and important. The infrastructure NetApp does is different from some of the secondary backup solutions we support and the most critical workloads, the most demanding runs on our infrastructure. So having an eye on the workload, optimizing the infrastructure for the workload, will help you deliver all the value that truly, truly can come out of the best data infrastructure.

Rebecca Knight

>> So we're here at NetApp INSIGHT. I'm sure you're having lots of conversations with customers. What are they telling you are their biggest pain points? What's keeping them up at night, especially as they're trying to blend their cloud operations with on-prem systems?

>> That definitely we hear data, we have them everywhere, and how do you bring the hybrid together? And I think I'm excited just even on the AI side, when Krish stood up and said, "Hey, we have intelligent data services to bring the global namespace together," that's a big challenge. Customers are like, "What do I do with all the data? How do I know?"

Rob Strechay

>> I already told Krish we're going to dig in on the metadata and the global metadata namespace thing. That thing was, I'm like, you buried the lede in that.

>> Right, so that's one we hear and you can see we're just, as a company, zeroing in on that. And the other thing that was really interesting is, because you asked on-prem and cloud, what we've seen is a lot of people want to cloud-ify their on-prem solution. And so they want to take all the greatness that's in the cloud and have that agility and the granularity and Kubernetes in their private cloud. So that's another thing customers talk to us about and say, "How do you bring all those great things so we can leverage in on-prem?" And we're excited about the fact that our entire intelligence services is no longer just worried about one side. We think about the entire environment. A third one I think we covered is security, as always, and the ransomware protection and the workload at the workload level. So I don't know if you know the data infrastructure inside how a workload security capability add into it. So not only we look at access, we look at anomalies of the workload. Suddenly something else changed, then that could be an indication. So we work the, we call it a multi-layer defense, secure storage and secure workload and working with some of the big SIM vendors to make sure that whole remediation gets happened, and super excited about we are here to help customers solve all the things that's top of mind for them.

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah, because I think again, it brings it back together with the fact that the security aspect and there was the cyber resilience announcements that were made. And I think the time to remediation, time to detection and being able to protect things. And what you're doing is, and I think you just said it, is, and we were big supporters of this, is that a cloud operating model doesn't mean you're a hyperscaler. It means that you are operating like a cloud provider in your own organization.

>> Yes.

Rob Strechay

>> Do you see that that's really pushing a lot of your roadmap these days and how you're focusing on providing to your customers?

Rebecca Knight

>> Absolutely, because Instaclustr is a product that was actually born to support customers in the cloud. And more and more of our customers want to say we love those, but we also want to do open source on-prem. So that's driving our roadmap priorities for Instaclustr. And for data infrastructure insight, we already built in some of the Kubernetes support because some of our big customers of OCI, they actually said, "Hey, what are we doing with Kubernetes containers?" So that trend certainly is driving the focus. But on the other hand, we want to continue to support our unified data storage wherever they need to be. I don't know if you know this, I spent 15 years in cybersecurity. So when you talk about cybersecurity resilience, it's so close to my heart, and I'm very excited how we're bringing secure by design into our storage development, into how we think about monitoring and love every bits of that.

Rebecca Knight

>> So how did you make the transition? I mean, it's not necessarily a career transition. You're still in the same industry, of course, but what made you move into cloud operations?

Rob Strechay

>> So I always say and people ask, "What are you interested in?" I say, "There's an intersection of big data. You can put AI into that, cloud and security." So I see that as the intersection. You can work it from a different angle, but it is challenges you got to help people solve in security, in data explosion, in how do you get more efficiency, you're just going at it from a different angle. I was going at it from a cybersecurity angle to help people secure cloud, secure operations. And here, I'm trying to go from the angle of how do we bring better efficiency and how do we, there's a whole concept security needs to shift left so it's not an afterthought. I think getting the opportunity to work in a company on the infrastructure level where we can design security into it is a new adventure and a very rewarding one.

Rebecca Knight

>> Excellent. Haiyan, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. You're always a terrific person to talk to about these topics.

Rob Strechay

>> Thank you. Thank you both, and thank you for spending the time, and I can't believe you know so much history.

Rob Strechay

>> Oh, well.

>> And I can come and talk way back.

Rob Strechay

>> It makes me feel old because my hair wasn't gray back then, but then there's a whole bunch of other stories that go along with that. I shaved my head once for St. Baldrick's, and part of what I love about the community, and we started off today in the keynote with community is that, and I think you're seeing it and emulating it, is that people really at NetApp have that community feeling, and we've been hearing it from the customers as well. So thank you for coming on.

Rob Strechay

>> I hope you're as excited as us of the evolution at NetApp, the evolution of intelligent services and our intelligent data infrastructure.

Rob Strechay

>> Well, I look forward to talking to you again because I think there's so much more in that cloud operating model to dig into, so we'll keep in touch.

Rebecca Knight

>> I'm in.

Rebecca Knight

>> Thank you so much.

>> Thank you.

Rebecca Knight

>> I'm Rebecca Knight. For Rob Strechay, keep it right here on theCUBE for more of NetApp Insight 2024. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in enterprise tech news and analysis.