Press release:

Culture of Innovation Drives Customer and Partner Success, Lands NetApp on Forbes’s List of the World’s Most Innovative Companies

NetApp Is the Only Storage Vendor on the List for the Second Year in a Row

SUNNYVALE, Calif.— September 5, 2012—NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) today was ranked #51 out of 100 onForbes magazine's "World’s Most Innovative Companies" list for 2012. Innovation is at the heart of NetApp’s culture, and drives its employees’ commitment to delivering the best experience to its customers through every facet of how they do business with NetApp. It is this culture of innovation that enables customers to leverage IT for strategic and competitive advantages. Additionally, NetApp’s relationships with technology and go-to-market partners deliver a best-in-class innovation stack experience that helps customers go further, faster.

Tom Georgens, President and CEO of NetApp:

“Innovation is part of NetApp’s DNA and it has driven our growth throughout our history. Our 20 years of innovation has been about delivering the best technology and products, as well as innovating in everything we do to create a differentiated experience for our customers and partners around the world. Forbes’s recognition is a testament that our innovative spirit continues to thrive today and help our customers achieve great business outcomes.”

Andrew Henderson, CIO, ING DIRECT:

“Similar to NetApp, ING DIRECT has had a proud history of innovation since 1999. As the world’s leading direct savings bank, we pioneered branchless banking and quickly grew to become Australia’s fifth largest mortgage lender. NetApp helped ING DIRECT Australia bring new banking products and services to market more quickly via its ‘Bank in a Box’ project. In the past, it would take our software and application development team months to be able to test new ideas in our complex banking environment. Today, it takes minutes. NetApp’s innovation met our own appetite for innovation and gave our business a competitive edge.”

Watch NetApp’s co-founder, Dave Hitz, discuss 20 years of NetApp innovation and reflect on how data has changed over the past two decades.

Innovating Across All Areas of NetApp’s Business

NetApp innovation focuses on delivering an outstanding customer experience, developing industry-leading products and technology, developing best-in-class partnerships, and building the best team in the industry. NetApp’s innovation across these areas of its business has enabled the company to accelerate success for its customers, partners, shareholders, and NetApp.

Currently, NetApp® Data ONTAP® is the industry's #1 storage operating system¹. More customers trust Data ONTAP than any other storage operating system because it is the key to unleashing an agile data infrastructure that is Intelligent, Immortal, and Infinite. With the industry’s leading storage operating system, NetApp customers can be confident that they have the agility to shift and grow their businesses in whatever directions necessary.

NetApp also currently ranks as the #3 world’s best multinational workplace by the Great Place to Work Institute, based on a unique corporate culture that values creativity, teamwork, open communication, leadership, adaptability, and trust. By living these values, NetApp employees are empowered to develop new ideas every day and continue to make breakthroughs happen for the company’s customers. It is NetApp’s unwavering commitment to building a strong culture that has resulted in a company that customers and partners want to do business with.

About the Forbes Most Innovative Companies List

Forbes World’s Most Innovative Companies list relies on investors, who vote with their wallets, to identify the companies they expect to be innovative today and in the future. For a full description of the methodology, please visit
www.forbes.com/sites/innovatorsdna/2012/09/05/how-we-rank-the-worlds-most-innovative-companies/.

The full list of winners and related stories will appear in the September 24 issue of Forbes and are available now online at www.forbes.com/sites/innovatorsdna/2012/09/05/how-innovative-leaders-maintain-their-edge/.

Additional Resources

• Follow Tom Mendoza’s Twitter and blog on culture and leadership.
• Learn about NetApp innovation in healthcare:
  www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkzRJFQ-mQY&feature=player_detailpage
• Follow the NetApp 360 blog: communities.netapp.com/community/netapp-blogs/netapp-360
• Follow NetApp on Twitter: www.twitter.com/NetApp
• Join NetApp on Facebook: www.facebook.com/NetApp
• View NetApp videos on YouTube: www.youtube.com/NetAppTV
• Connect with NetApp on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=111681

About NetApp
NetApp creates innovative storage and data management solutions that deliver outstanding cost efficiency and accelerate business breakthroughs. Our commitment to living our core values and consistently being recognized as a great place to work around the world are fundamental to our long-term growth and success, as well as the success of our pathway partners and customers. Discover our passion for helping companies around the world go further, faster at www.netapp.com.

Press Contact:
Roger Villareal
(408) 822-1959
rogerv@netapp.com

NetApp, the NetApp logo, Go further, faster, and Data ONTAP are trademarks or registered trademarks of NetApp, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such.

¹ Source: NetApp internal estimates in terms of revenue and storage capacity in the worldwide open-networked storage market as of June 2012: VNX, VNXe, and Celerra NS can run any Flare or Dart operating system. The contribution of these products to the OS share has been estimated based on the proportion of NAS and SAN installations in these products (NAS—Dart; SAN—Flare).

Independent Software Vendor Migrates to Windows Azure

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Independent Software Vendor Gradatim Migrates to Windows Azure, Helping Reduce Deployment Time by 84 Percent While Saving $2 Million

Microfinance software specialist simplifies infrastructure, optimizes customer delivery, and expands capability and global scalability by adopting Microsoft cloud services platform.

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NEW DELHI — March 27, 2012 — Independent software vendor Gradatim, a specialist in creating technology solutions for businesses that offer microfinance products and services, migrated to the Windows Azure cloud platform to simplify its service configuration and gain global scalability, achieving an 84 percent decrease in project deployment time and saving an estimated $2 million (U.S.). In 2011, Gradatim evaluated a number of shared services platforms, including IBM SmartCloud, and selected Windows Azure, the Microsoft cloud services development, hosting and management environment. “We wanted a platform-as-a-service solution, not just cloud infrastructure,” said CV Prakash, founder and CEO of Gradatim. “We concluded that Windows Azure offered the best long-term value and the most reliable cloud platform for transforming our business.” “Microfinance” describes the market for financial instruments such as loans and insurance policies, which involve small principal and transaction amounts. Service providers must be agile enough to quickly develop low-cost, custom products that can be accessed anywhere, including on mobile devices. To capitalize on the growing demand for its insurance policy and loan management applications, Gradatim chose to migrate its solutions to Windows Azure to achieve simplicity and global scalability. By eliminating the need to set up datacenters and invest in server hardware to deliver its solutions, Gradatim substantially reduced its operating expenses. The company estimates that the cost savings from adopting Windows Azure will total about $2 million (U.S.) over the next 18 months. The company previously needed about three months to fully deploy its solutions to customers. The same work can now be done in two weeks, which represents an 84 percent increase in efficiency. “Faster deployments mean that we start generating revenue from each project faster, so we have more flexibility in the investment decisions that we make to grow our business,” Prakash said. The on-demand resource availability and scalability offered by Azure also helps the company spend less time planning customer deployments. Windows Azure allowed Gradatim to not only shift to cloud-based delivery of its products but also to make major improvements to its pricing model. Rather than buying a perpetual license to access the software, customers can choose to pay a nominal subscription fee, along with a percentage of the value of each transaction or a fixed fee for each loan or insurance policy they manage, using Gradatim technology. “We’ve been able to restructure our pricing to better align with the way customers across the industry consume our services,” Prakash said. “We are excited about the impact this migration has for Gradatim and its customers,” said Srikanth Karnakota, director, Server and Cloud Business, Microsoft India. “Azure has been enabling customers to innovate, reduce time to market and access newer markets. The current offering from Gradatim strengthens its position in the finance industry as a company focused on delivering affordable, high-caliber service.” More information on Gradatim’s move to Windows Azure is available in the Microsoft case study andMicrosoft News Center. Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services, and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

ACI Worldwide Named a Leader in IDC Marketscape: Financial Crimes Management 2012 Vendor Assessment

ACI Worldwide Named a Leader in IDC MarketScape: Financial Crimes Management 2012 Vendor Assessment

Proactive Risk Manager™ Recognized for Real-Time Pattern Recognition Abilities, Customizable Alerts, and Reporting Options

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

(New York, N.Y. - March 21, 2012) - ACI Worldwide (Nasdaq: ACIW), a leading international provider of payment systems, today announced it has been ranked in the “Leader” category for financial crimes management by leading industry analyst firm IDC Financial Insights in the recent IDC MarketScape report, Financial Crimes Management 2012 Vendor Assessment.

ACI’s ranking is based on its flagship fraud detection product, Proactive Risk Manager. IDC Financial Insights stated, “Proactive Risk Manager's greatest strength is its integration with ACI's other payment products, particularly its BASE24-eps card processing system and its MTS wire and ACH systems. This integration enables Proactive Risk Manager to operate almost entirely in real time. Real-time alerting and decisioning continues to be a primary selling point, reflecting the product's roots in the card market.”

Shesh Gorur, vice president & product line manager, ACI Worldwide, said, “We are delighted to be recognized as a Leader by IDC in this report. Our goal is to provide a product that is both flexible and powerful, supporting our customers’ current needs while allowing them to react to the evolving world of payments fraud.”

As defined by the report, financial crime management includes the IT solutions that anticipate, detect, analyze, and prevent fraudulent transactions, money laundering, and employee financial misconduct through the use of one or more of the following: decision trees, neural networks, predictive scoring models, network link analysis, scenario matching, data mining, case management, and entity and device profiling.

Proactive Risk Manager is a comprehensive enterprise fraud detection solution to help card issuers, merchants, acquirers and financial institutions combat financial crime. By monitoring account activity across all lines of business, Proactive Risk Manager enables users to see more fraudulent activity in a shorter amount of time, minimizing losses and helping to preserve the customer relationship. Proactive Risk Manager combines the power of predictive analytics and expertly defined rules for fast, accurate and flexible response to the evolving and growing nature of fraud and money laundering.

For more information on Proactive Risk Manager please visitwww.aciworldwide.com/proactiveriskmanager.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

F5 Positioned in Leaders Quadrant of the Application Delivery Controller Magic Quadrant

Foremost industry analyst firm evaluates vendors in the Application Delivery Controller market based on ‘Completeness of Vision’ and ‘Ability to Execute’

SEATTLE, March 21, 2012

F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, announced today its position in the Leaders Quadrant of the 2010 Magic Quadrant for Application Delivery Controllers from Gartner, Inc.¹

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Application Delivery Controllers evaluates 13 vendors in the ADC market space based on Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute. According to Gartner’s methodology, “A leader exhibits the ability to shape the market by introducing additional capabilities in its product offerings, and by raising awareness of the importance of these features. Key capabilities for a leader revolve around the Advanced Platform (AP) ADC capabilities that focus on enterprise application capabilities. We expect a leader to have strong or growing market share, especially in the AP ADCs, and to have solutions that resonate with an increasing number of enterprises. Expertise in complex data center application deployment also is a necessity to be a leader in the Magic Quadrant for ADCs.”

“We believe F5’s strong customer and partner relationships have helped us become a leader in the Magic Quadrant, as well as Gartner, Inc.’s worldwide market share rankings for the Application Delivery Controllers marketplace based on vendor revenue in Q2 of calendar year 2010². F5’s market execution and differentiation are the result of our ability to respond to the evolving needs of our customers. In addition, F5’s financial stability, the depth of our application expertise, the integration of key F5 software capabilities onto one platform, and DevCentral’s presence as the industry’s largest ADC-focused community continue to contribute to our success,” said Dan Matte, SVP of Marketing and Business Development at F5.

For other analyst coverage on F5, please visit www.f5.com/news-press-events/market-research/.

¹ Gartner, Inc., Magic Quadrant for Application Delivery Controllers, Mark Fabbi, Joe Skorupa, 18 November 2010.

² Gartner, Inc., Market Share: Application Acceleration Equipment, Worldwide, 2Q10, Joe Skorupa, Nhat Pham, 15 September 2010.

News Release from NetApp

Note to visitors:  The Palo-Negro-Blog is no longer being actively maintained.  For more current posts, please visit:  http://JBK-BizTech.blogspot.com

Customers Rely on NetApp for the Highest Level of Excellence in Secure Solutions for their Missions

NetApp Data ONTAP 8.0 Earns Internationally Recognized Common Criteria Certification to Meet Stringent Government Standards

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — March 5, 2012 — NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) this week announced that NetApp Data ONTAP® 8.0.0 operating in 7-Mode and Data ONTAP® 8.0.1 operating in 7-Mode have completed evaluation for an EAL2+ certification under the Communications Security Establishment Canada’s (CSEC) Common Criteria Evaluation and Certification Scheme (CCS). Government and commercial customers alike receive the best possible security solutions from NetApp as the company continues to commit to achieving the highest caliber in IT government security validations.

As the first storage vendor to meet Common Criteria Certification standards in 2005, NetApp set the bar for excellence in security features across the storage industry. Today’s Data ONTAP EAL2+ certification is evidence of NetApp’s continued commitment to help customers run their missions better, more cost effectively and securely.

“We are proud to be able to successfully continue to invest in securing our customers against attacks on their valuable data,” said Mark Weber, president and general manager of the U.S. Public Sector, NetApp. “It is that commitment to our customers that makes NetApp one of the best storage vendor to do business with in the U.S. Public Sector and in the world.”

In order to facilitate the prompt completion of the Common Criteria certification, NetApp partnered with Corsec Security, Inc., a consulting, documentation, and project management services firm.

“NetApp’s achievement of Common Criteria certification for Data ONTAP® 8.0.0 operating in 7-Mode and Data ONTAP® 8.0.1 operating in 7-Mode underscores their dedication to continuously providing security assurance in their technology,” said Matthew Appler, CEO, Corsec Security. “We were highly impressed with NetApp’s solution and with their commitment to the evaluation process.”

As befits an industry leader, the NetApp security story is much broader than achieving common criteria certification. NetApp offers multiple FIPS 140-2 validated data at rest encryption solutions, such as NetApp Storage Encryption using self-encrypting drives and Brocade FibreChannel Encryption Switches and blades. Upgraded NAS encryption appliances will be announced soon.

NetApp’s Secure Multi-Tenancy architecture, developed in concert with Cisco and VMware, is a unique service-oriented infrastructure that includes all server, storage, and networking hardware and software to facilitate secure sharing, reuse, and dynamic resource allocation for next-generation data centers and cloud service providers.

NetApp has also achieved ISO/IEC 27001, the global standard for Information Security Management Systems (ISMS). This provides NetApp customers, partners, vendors, and employees with the confidence that information in the hands of NetApp is protected in accordance with the ISO standard .

NetApp demonstrated NetApp Storage Encryption in the OASIS KMIP interoperability demo at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco last week.

News Release from EMC - Storage Software

EMC Achieves Decade of Storage Software Market Share Leadership—Gains Market Share

EMC Captures More Than 2X the Market Share of Closest Leading Vendor in Storage Infrastructure Software Market, Driven by Customer Adoption of EMC FAST Technology, According to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Qview

HOPKINTON, Mass. - March 6, 2012

EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is the #1 worldwide storage software market leader in total revenue for the 10^th consecutive year, according to the latest IDC Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software QView, March 2012. EMC outpaced the storage software market growth and gained market share during the fourth quarter and full calendar year of 2011. EMC also recently announced its position as the leading provider of external disk storage systems for the 15^th consecutive year in factory revenue, according to the latest IDC Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker, March 2012.

EMC's decade of leadership, and most recently its ability to capture 2X the 2011 market share of the closest leading vendor in the storage infrastructure software market, is driven in large part by rapid customer adoption of EMC® FAST (Fully Automated Storage Tiering). EMC FAST is one of EMC's fastest-growing storage software products. The technology enables customers to achieve higher levels of performance, cost efficiency and storage utilization in virtual data centers by exploiting the benefits of enterprise Flash drives and a tiered architecture. Additionally, in 2011, EMC shipped over 24 PBs of Flash drive capacity—more than any other storage vendor in the market today (see related newsrelease).

IDC Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software QView Highlights

• EMC maintained its #1 leadership position in the overall storage software market for 2011.
• EMC outpaced the storage software market with 13.9% year-over-year growth, while the overall market grew 11.3% in 2011.
• EMC leads the storage infrastructure software market with 41.6% market share in 2011-more than 2X that of the closest leading vendor, capturing 10.5 points of additional market share compared to 2010, and grew storage infrastructure software revenue at 52.5%.

"EMC is leading customers on their journey to hybrid cloud computing, which is forever changing the way IT is built, operated and consumed. Data centers have been consolidated, standardized and virtualized. Customers are using 'smart' software, like EMC FAST, to automate more and more of what previously were burdensome administrative tasks to make their data centers more reliable and efficient. EMC's decade of storage software market leadership has been achieved by continually innovating and delivering solutions like FAST that drive the adoption of powerful technologies like enterprise Flash drives," said Pat Gelsinger, President and Chief Operating Officer, EMC Information Infrastructure Products.

Additional Resources:

• Read IDC's news release
• More information on IDC’s Worldwide Storage Software QView
• Connect with EMC via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn

News Release from CA Technologies - Cloud Commons Ecosystem

CA Technologies Expands Cloud Commons Ecosystem with New Features, Partners and Offerings

ISLANDIA, N.Y., March 7, 2012 – CA Technologies today announced several significant new features, partners, offerings and growth milestones in the Cloud Commons® ecosystem. Since the launch of the Cloud Commons Marketplace and Developer Studio in November, membership has increased by more than 40 percent and more than 500 members have joined the Developer Studio. The Cloud Commons Marketplace now includes over 50 enterprise-class solutions from CA Technologies and partners including AFORE Solutions, Layer 7 Technologies and Dome9 Security. In addition, developers and independent software vendors (ISVs) can now use the Developer Studio to create cloud-ready IT solutions designed for both public and private cloud environments at no cost, using CA AppLogic® software on test grids provided by partner ScaleMatrix, a private cloud hosting and San Diego colocation company.

Cloud Commons Marketplace Highlights

The Cloud Commons Marketplace features several new offerings spanning managed services, IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, including cloud applications, appliances, templates, packaged services, and content for cloud applications. Notably, CA Technologies is making available nearly 20 products that help customers maximize their CA Process Automation investments. Enterprises and service providers can use these offerings to orchestrate IT automation tools quickly and efficiently, helping to streamline virtualization and cloud deployments.

Customers can also purchase additional CA Technologies software appliances configured to run on CA AppLogic clouds. Newly available CA AppLogic appliances include: CA ARCserve® software, CA Service Catalog, CA Oblicore Guarantee™ software, CA Service Desk Manager, and CA Software Change Manager.

Third-party partners with new solutions available in the store include: Acolyst, Armada Group, BirdHosting, Cirrhus9, CorePLUS World, DNS Europe, GigaSpaces, Radix Technologies, ScaleUp, Skygone, and Visionway.

Cloud Commons Partner Activity

AFORE Solutions recently announced plans to offer its CloudLink security and management solutions and professional services through the Cloud Commons Marketplace. CloudLink is a multi-tenancy solution that securely extends customer enterprise networks with end-to-end encryption of network traffic to CA AppLogic clouds. AFORE’s professional service offerings include integration and migration from other cloud platforms, as well as appliance development and deployment for customers and partners of CA Technologies.

Dome9 recently joined the Cloud Commons ecosystem and will offer its SaaS security management solution in the Marketplace. Dome9 provides a first-of-its-kind, automated cloud firewall management service that centrally manages security across all servers and clouds.

Layer 7 Technologies is introducing an API/Web Services Gateway deployed as a CA AppLogic appliance that enables enterprises to integrate data center applications with services they run in a CA AppLogic cloud. For ISVs delivering SaaS services from a CA AppLogic cloud deployed on-premise or through a managed service provider, Layer 7 secures and governs how APIs are exposed to Web and mobile developers.

Supporting Quotes

“As the depth and breadth of the ecosystem reaches critical mass, we’re now realizing our vision for a self-sustaining collaborative community, development site and e-commerce marketplace for all things cloud,” said Brian Burba, vice president of Solutions Management, CA Technologies.

“The Cloud Commons ecosystem has broken down the barriers to entry for software vendors, service providers and end users that want to aggregate, provide, or consume cloud services through a true e-commerce engine spanning CA Technologies and third-party cloud solutions, platforms and providers.”

“We’re excited to join the growing set of services available in the Cloud Commons ecosystem,” said Dave Meizlik, vice president, Marketing & Business Development, Dome9. “Most cloud servers have security stacks left orphaned because they’re otherwise unmanageable. Together with CA Technologies, Dome9 will deliver centralized and automated cloud security management across all servers and clouds.”

"The Cloud Commons ecosystem represents a powerful opportunity for reliable, consistent hybrid cloud computing," said Dimitri Sirota, founder and vice president of Alliances, Layer 7 Technologies. “Our goal in partnering with CA Technologies is to make it easier for enterprises, service providers and ISVs building on the CA AppLogic cloud platform, to simplify how they expose APIs to external partners, mobile apps and corporate data centers through a rapidly provisionable API/Web Services virtual appliance.”

For more information about these new features, partnerships, and offerings, register at the Cloud Commons site and follow@CloudCommons on Twitter.