NetApp/SolidFire Unveils Storage Purchasing Model for Next Gen Data Center

NetApp SolidFire announced FlashForward Capacity Licensing, a storage model that offers flexibility, investment protection and peace of mind for how customers purchase and grow their storage infrastructure.

FlashForward Capacity Licensing complements company’s scale-out block storage architecture with a flexible enterprise-wide software licensing and support model that is precisely aligned with how service providers and advanced enterprises are looking to purchase and consume storage infrastructure.

FlashForward Capacity Licensing extends new software licensing rights to SolidFire customers, including the right to perpetually transfer software across multiple generations of hardware at no additional cost, and the ability to pool software licensing across an enterprise’s entire storage footprint. With FlashForward Capacity Licensing, customers can now combine the simplicity of purchasing SF-Series appliances at commodity hardware costs with the flexibility of licensing Element OS on an enterprise-wide basis. FlashForward software and support licenses are purchased in capacity increments (starting at 100TB) that cover a pooled amount of capacity across an unlimited number of firm’s systems. This model allows customers to license SolidFire’s software in greater alignment with the dynamic and growing nature of their business.

“In the era of the software-defined data center, customers are demanding more from their infrastructure investments. The traditional storage software licensing model is long due for an overhaul, and our recent experience with the Element X program has demonstrated how eager customers are to change the way they purchase and grow their storage infrastructure,” said Dave Wright, founder, VP and GM, SolidFire. “The days of ridiculous storage hardware prices combined with software licenses forever bound to a specific piece of hardware are over. Customers want a fundamentally more flexible and fair way to procure storage in the next generation data center. FlashForward delivers our customers a more agile, cost-effective and future-proofed approach to buying storage relative to the unnecessary burdens imposed by legacy storage purchasing models.“

Components of FlashForward model that deliver new value to customers include:

• Fully perpetual and transferable licensing – no need to rebuy software when upgrading or replacing hardware

• Granular capacity licensing – greater alignment of software license purchases with actual usage

• Provisioned capacity-based pricing – reduces cost uncertainty from unpredictable data reduction rates, and the reliance on high data reduction to make all flash Storage cost effective

• Pooled capacity model – software licenses are enterprise-wide, eliminating stranded capacity and allowing for seamless repurposing of hardware to new sites as business needs dictate

• Built-In economies of scale – built-in capacity-tier discounts ensure pricing goes down as deployed capacity goes up.