NetApp, a late entrant into the hyperconverged infrastructure business, is planning to end production of its NetApp HCI technology and shift its focus to Project Astra, its planned platform for providing persistent storage when managing Kubernetes data and applications.
NetApp's head of product for cloud Eric Han told CRN that the company was transitioning away from NetApp HCI, a hardware platform combining compute and storage, as the market was moving toward software-defined storage.
“We see the world moving to Kubernetes and moving to software-defined and away from appliances,” Han said. “The market is adopting Kubernetes. Hyperconverged infrastructure was a necessary form factor to help in adopting the cloud. But providing a box for servers to do that is not necessary.”