Interview with Guillaume de Landtsheer, Area Vice President of NetApp in France, during the NetApp Insight Xtra Paris 2024 event, December 10, 2024.
NetApp is now number one in France in Flash storage. How do you view this performance?
For several years, we have worked to meet the demands of our customers, and offer them the widest possible storage solutions. On Flash storage, we are really in a complementarity of high performance storage, compared to capacitive storage, for example. Over the years, we have succeeded in building an extremely wide range of products – a range of products which has never been as wide as today, in fact: flash storage, mechanical storage, but also NAS , SAN, and object storage.
“We have built an extremely wide range of products: flash storage, mechanical storage, but also NAS, SAN, and object storage. »
Hypescalers use our technologies, many service providers, too. We have always worked towards the same goal: helping our customers make their data infrastructure intelligent. Today, we are lucky to have with us, on NetApp insight xtra Paris, our CEO, George Kurian. Its presence illustrates the importance of France within the global NetApp organization.
What trends are you seeing and how are you preparing to respond to them?
The first issue is a global subject, it is of course the explosion in the volume of data. And we all face it. We find among all our clients the same problems of cost optimization, standardization, rationalization. We are here to help them. Security issues are also very important, and everyone is aware of them. We therefore have a huge amount of data available, with AI models that allow us, little by little, to exploit it. This is an absolutely incredible revolution, we are truly at a crossroads. And we are lucky, NetApp, to be at the data level, to be able to give our customers the ability to manage this data correctly, to make the most of it.
A word on NetApp’s CSR policy?
I just mentioned the explosion in the volume of data in the world, an exponential increase. We will have 175 zettabytes of data in 2025, 1000 in 2030. Behind these figures, we know that 68% of data is never reused. Some actors copy, copy, copy, and ultimately never reuse their data. But overall, we also know that digital energy consumption already represents approximately 2% of global energy consumption, on all subjects combined. With the explosion in the volume of data and digital technology, we risk reaching 7 to 8% in 2030. We have a real responsibility in relation to that.
“With the explosion in the volume of data, the share of digital technology in global energy consumption is likely to rise to 7 – 8% in 2030”
NetApp is positioned on several levels in relation to these challenges: The first concerns our range of products, which makes it possible to store data at the right price level, at the right level of performance and at the right level of energy consumption. Data consulted very frequently will be on very efficient technological media, which mechanically will consume energy. Conversely, data that will not be used regularly can be transferred automatically, via data tiering mechanisms, to less efficient, less expensive media, but above all less energy consuming. We work a lot on all these subjects.
“Around ten years ago, we were able to compress data to a ratio of 1 to 2. Today, we are more likely to have a ratio of 1 to 4”
Another crucial aspect is data compression. About ten years ago, we were able to compress data, a bit like zipping a document. We could compress the data to a ratio of 1 to 2. Today, we are more on a ratio of 1 to 4, and this could go well beyond depending on the types of data. Finally, we have an ecosystem of partners – Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and of course players like Atos, Eviden, Cheops Technologies, Stordata, which are French players, who offer IT services, managed services to their clients. And of course we invite our customers to use these resources, because data center management professionals are also optimization professionals. From a CSR perspective, it is also important to know precisely where to put this data.
On NetApp Insight Xtra Paris, you bring together your customers and partners. What are you expecting from this day?
We are very proud of the growth we have had in the French market. We had good performance in terms of market share in the different storage categories. You should know that we have also doubled the size of the subsidiary in 4 years, which is a very good performance. And today, we are delighted to bring together both our customers and partners and our collaborators.
“We are very proud of NetApp’s growth on the French market, across different storage categories”
Everyone can trade. We have really created a community that we live together and which lives really well together. NetApp Insight Xtra Paris is a very important date of our year. It is also a local element, which takes up the various announcements that were made during our major event, a few weeks ago, in Las Vegas. This allows our French customers and partners to benefit from the same flavor of the event and the same announcements.
What will be your ambitions in France for 2025?
We will remain ambitious. We managed to obtain a number 1 position on the French market in SAN, NAS and flash storage. The idea will obviously be to maintain this position. We are in a competitive sector, and I know that our “corp” is preparing some very, very good announcements for us that will allow us to support our customers throughout the coming year. Ultimately, our goal remains the same: to continue to serve our customers and support them in their digital transformation.
Comments collected on NetApp Insight Xtra Paris 2024, December 10, 2024.
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