NetApp announced NetApp StorageGRID for VMware Sovereign Cloud. The NetApp plugin for VMware Cloud Director Object Storage Extension enables sovereign cloud customers to more cost-effectively store, secure, protect, and preserve unstructured data while meeting global data privacy and residency regulations. NetApp also announced the latest release of NetApp ONTAP Tools for VMware vSphere (OTV 10.0) designed to simplify and centralize enterprise data management across multi-tenant vSphere environments.

The concept of sovereignty is emerging as a necessary component of cloud computing for many entities that process and maintain highly sensitive data, such as national and state governments, and highly regulated industries, such as finance and healthcare. National governments are also looking to expand digital economic capability and reduce reliance on multi-national firms for their cloud services.

NetApp's new Object Storage plug-in for VMware Cloud Director enables Cloud Service Providers to seamlessly integrate StorageGRID as their go-to Object Storage solution to offer customers secure Object Storage for unstructured data. The integration delivers StorageGRID services within the familiar VMware Cloud Director user interface, minimizing training efforts and maximizing time to revenue for partners. A standout feature of StorageGRID is its universal compatibility and native support for industry-standard APIs, such as Amazon S3 API, ensuring smooth interoperability across diverse cloud environments. Further enhanced values like automated lifecycle management help ensure more cost-effective safeguarding, storage, and maintain high availability for VMware environments with unstructured data.

"We know that data sovereignty is increasingly important to large organizations and that they are continually increasing the volume of highly sensitive data they need to manage and store," said Phil Brotherton, Vice President, Solutions & Alliances at NetApp. "The integration of NetApp StorageGRID with VMware Sovereign Cloud is a significant achievement for NetApp and a real game changer for our customers with unstructured data in the cloud who must maintain sovereign control of that data at all times."

NetApp's Sovereign Cloud integration with Cloud Director will allow providers to offer customers:

• Better assurance that sensitive data, including metadata, remains under sovereign control while preventing access by foreign authorities that could violate data privacy laws.
• Increased security and compliance that protects applications and data from rapidly evolving attack vectors while maintaining continuous compliance with a trusted local. infrastructure, built-in frameworks, and local experts.
• Future-proofed infrastructure to react quickly to changing data privacy regulations, security threats, and geopolitics.
• The ability to unlock the value of data with secure data sharing and analysis to drive innovation without violating privacy laws. Data integrity is protected to ensure accurate insights.

VMware Sovereign Cloud providers commit to designing and operating cloud solutions based on modern, software-defined architectures that embody key principles and best practices outlined in the VMware Sovereign Cloud framework. Workloads running on VMware Sovereign Cloud environments today will often consist of wide ranges of data sets, including transactional workloads, as well as large volumes of unstructured data needing to be managed in a cost-effective and integrated manner that is compliant to regulated standards for sovereign/regulated customers.

"VMware Sovereign Cloud providers help customers in highly regulated industries meet the need for highly secure, data-driven innovation. Because no one company can do this alone, VMware relies on a powerful and interconnected ecosystem to bring innovative solutions to market," said Rajeev Bhardwaj, Vice President, Cloud Provider Platform at VMware. "NetApp is a longtime, strategic technology partner this is helping us address Sovereign Cloud customers' requirements for advanced data services. NetApp's Sovereign Cloud integration with VMware Cloud Director will help customers simplify complex data environments and help ensure their data will stay secure and in compliance of the data sovereignty laws in their regions."

Today NetApp also announced a collaboration with VMware to modernize API integrations between NetApp ONTAP and VMware vSphere. This integration helps VMware administrators simplify the management and operations of NetApp ONTAP-based data management platforms across multi-tenant vSphere environments and allow users to leverage a new micro-services-based architecture to deliver greater scale and availability. With the latest releases of NetApp ONTAP and ONTAP Tools for vSphere, NetApp made provisioning, protecting, and better securing modern VMware environments at a large scale significantly faster and easier while maintaining a single point of visibility and control through vSphere.

NetApp ONTAP Tools for VMware deliver two key benefits to customers:

• A redefined architecture with VMware vSphere APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA) integration simplifies policy-driven operations and cloud-like scale.
• Automation-enabled framework through an API-first approach that allows IT teams to integrate with existing tooling and build end-to-end workflows to consume the features and capabilities easily.