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Collaborative partnerships among technology companies offer numerous benefits to customers, including enhanced visibility into customer challenges and the creation of better overall solutions. When executed effectively, these partnerships can result in lower costs for customers, the sharing of best practices, a competitive advantage for the partners, and the establishment of stronger customer relationships.
NetApp and Microsoft have been strategic technology partners for over twenty-five years. Together, they have successfully assisted numerous companies in overcoming their most challenging IT obstacles, both on-premises and in the cloud. That is why I am excited about the recent announcement from Oracle and Microsoft regarding the launch of Oracle Database@Azure. This groundbreaking service integrates Oracle database services on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) within Microsoft Azure datacenters.
With this announcement the companies now fully embrace Oracle in the Migrate and Modernize customer motion, where customers are now enabled to leverage the power of Microsoft’s platform and AI capabilities by providing a wide range of offerings that enable Oracle workloads on the Azure platform. The announcement includes – but is not limited to – the ability to run database services on Azure by collocating Oracle Exadata hardware deployed in Microsoft Azure datacenters (DCs). This enables mission critical Oracle Exadata Database, Oracle Autonomous Database, and Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) services to be delivered from within the Azure data center. On top of that, Microsoft further expands and enriches their position of Azure IaaS services to help customers migrate more Oracle workloads to Azure.
Why is this good for Azure NetApp Files you ask?
This announcement is great news for the Microsoft storage service, Azure NetApp Files, because it is clear from the announcement the Database@Azure solution is designed to cover a limited set of customers, with only limited regional coverage in the highest segment of the market. Microsoft will target the largest Oracle workload market segment with its Azure IaaS services and Azure NetApp Files. Oracle Database@Azure on Oracle infrastructure in Azure datacenters” is positioned for the most mission critical/XXL-type Oracle deployments that require Oracle Exadata. Whereas Azure NetApp Files is uniquely and increasingly well positioned for virtualized Oracle DB deployments (S-XL databases), running on Azure IaaS.
With this announcement Azure becomes the only cloud platform other than Oracle Cloud (OCI) to locally host a wide range of Oracle services. This announcement and subsequent marketing activities will generate a gravitational pull towards Azure – for Oracle deployments of all sizes. It is expected to increase the overall Oracle TAM in Azure, including the segment to be targeted with IaaS offerings.
Azure NetApp Files is already very well positioned to address the Oracle IaaS opportunity in Azure with multiple design-wins (examples below) and production deployments in place. Azure NetApp Files solution is available in 40+ regions globally and is an integral part of Azure solutions for Oracle today:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/workloads/oracle/oracle-storage#azure-netapp-file
The recent publication of Azure NetApp Files scale-up and scale-out benchmarks further
cements this position:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-netapp-files/performance-oracle-multiple-volumes
Azure NetApp Files already has a strong position for business-critical Oracle deployments with performance, availability, and data management (snapshots, backup, replication, clones, and application integration with the likes of AzAcSnap, ensure that Azure NetApp Files continues to maintain its edge over Azure Disk for Oracle IaaS deployments. Net-net, this is an opportunity for NetApp to ride the wave of Oracle deployments and reap the rewards of over 25 years of ONTAP innovation for Oracle workloads.
Do we have any customer proof for our strong position?
Yes, ample! Microsoft themselves lead with one of our prime and early adopting customers, ABN AMRO, on their Oracle Database@Azure landing page:
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/oracle/#imagetabs1-2
Another customer example is Italian energy company Italgas, who has
been leveraging Azure NetApp Files for a variety of reasons (performance, scalability,
availability, data management and cost optimizations) for a long time:
https://www.netapp.com/customers/italgas-azure-netapp-files-case-study/
At NetApp, we believe customers should have the freedom and flexibility to choose the services, infrastructure and clouds that best serve their unique needs. With our passion for helping customers create new value in the cloud, our partnership with Microsoft helps meet our customers’ evolving needs.
Interested customers can learn more about the Oracle on Azure IaaS here or reach out to their NetApp account team.
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