Lenovo, NetApp pit against Dell EMC, HPE to vie for the datacenter space

Taking an apparent aim at Dell EMC and HPE, Lenovo and NetApp have forged a storage alliance at the recently concluded Lenovo Transform event. The partnership also includes a joint venture in China, and a new series of all-flash and hybrid flash products that put them both in a much stronger position in the datacenter space.

The storage offerings include two families, each subdivided into all-flash and hybrid -flash products, jointly developed by Lenovo and NetApp and available now worldwide. Several of the products support NVMe (non-volatile memory express), the extremely fast communications protocol and controller able to move data to and from SSDs via the PCIe-bus standard. NVMe SSDs are designed to provide two orders of magnitude speed improvement over prior SSDs.

The companies stated that they would work closely together not only on the sales side but also in product development globally. On the other hand, the joint venture in China was formed to deliver storage products and data management solutions localized for China's unique requirements and distinct cloud ecosystem.

Lenovo understands that while it has a line-up of SAN (storage-attached network), DAS (direct-attached storage) and tape storage products, it still cannot rival Dell EMC and HPE as a complete, one-stop-shop hardware and storage provider. By teaming up with NetApp, Lenovo wishes to create an even playing field with the competitors. NetApp, on its part gets access to Lenovo manufacturing, global channels and a huge customer base.

Lenovo finds themselves in the same position as Dell and HP had been a long time ago. Over time, both Dell and HP grew their portfolios via a series of acquisitions, which include Dell's acquisition of EMC and HPE's Nimble Storage buy. With NetApp on its side, Lenovo can go pitching into enterprises for storage along with their broad portfolio of servers. This will also go a long way in helping the company gain some leverage in the enterprise.

Lenovo at present is tied for the third spot with IBM in server sales, behind leader Dell EMC and HPE.

According to Kirk Skaugen, president of Lenovo's datacenter group, Lenovo will now be able to address 90 percent of the total storage market from the present 15 percent.

Both Lenovo and NetApp have had a good year. Lenovo's 2018 milestones include 20 million servers shipped, helping to account for 48.6 percent year-over-year growth in global server shipments, said Skaugen.

While NetApp is the number-two player overall in external storage behind Dell EMC, it's the leader in all-flash storage, the fast-growing part of the storage market. In the second quarter this year, the all flash array market jumped 41.7 percent year over year, to $2.0 billion, while hybrid flash array rose 20.8 percent to $2.6 billion, according to IDC.

"This partnership brings together two companies with tremendous momentum," said Brad Anderson, general manager of NetApp's cloud infrastructure business unit. "The momentum in flash storage will only increase as prices come down."