Channel Checks Suggest NetApp's Cloud Products Gaining 'Mindshare' With Customers

Citing channel checks with sellers, Maxim Group said in a note Monday NetApp Inc. NTAP has begun to gain mindshare with resellers in terms of the company's hybrid cloud capabilities. This, according to the firm, is a significant differentiator for the company that is aligned with the longer-termed trend of hybrid cloud adoption.

Analyst Nehal Chokshi said NetApp has developed a portfolio of hybrid cloud data management products that include NetApp Private Storage, which was released in late 2012; ONTAP Cloud, launched in 2014 and Altavault, acquired from F5 Networks, Inc. FFIV in 2015; CloudSync and Cloud Control, both released in late 2016.

The analyst believes these products form an effective complete hybrid cloud data management capability that spans mission critical workload bursting from a private to a public cloud to the more basic disaster recovery capability.

Maxim Group referred to CEO George Kurian's statement from the Analyst Day, wherein he said the company has 1,500 hybrid cloud customers using NetApp Private Storage and thousands of customers using one of the company's hybrid cloud products with the customer base growing triple digits.

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Accordingly, the firm believes NetApp is on the path to achieving a 25 percent operating margin ratio in five years, given the continued improvement in organizational efficiency and reemerged product differentiation. Based on the 500-basis-point improvement expected in opex to revenue ratio and the 700-basis-point improvement expected in overall gross margin, the firm said it modeled operating margin expansion to 25 percent in 2022 from 17.2 percent in 2017.

This, the firm noted, compared to the guidance of 18-20 percent for 2020, provided by the company on its Analyst Day.