Serving up storage solutions - Network Appliance Inc - Company Operations

Communications News, August, 2001 by Richard R. Rogoski

With ContentDirector, administrators can securely distribute content from storage appliances across global networks to multiple content-delivery appliances. In addition, it provides the tools necessary to fully automate distribution of Internet content, including streaming media and graphics.

Another application supplied by NetApp is its ContentReporter, which provides network administrators with a method to gauge the effectiveness of their content-delivery systems. Analyzing content usage, performance and infrastructure load across the entire content-delivery network, enterprises, ISPs and content providers can gain visibility to file usage patterns, activity levels and error rates for both streaming and Web-based content.

According to the Gartner Group, the market for network-attached storage is growing at a rate of 65% a year. Warmenhoven agrees, saying the trend toward network storage is becoming a major thrust in the industry. He adds, however, that data management is becoming just as important. "Data has the highest value when it's closest to the person who needs it," he says. "You have to have a center-to-edge distribution strategy. Centrally managed, distributed data. That's the next major driver."

Name: Dan Warmenhoven

Company: Network Appliance Inc.

Title: CEO

Born: Jersey City, NJ, 1950

Education: BS in electrical engineering, with honors, Princeton University, 1972

Family: Wife, Charmaine; children: Eric, 20; Laura, 18

Career: Strategist

Hobbies: Golf, photography

Quotation: "The key to long-term sustained success is to find the win-win in every interaction, whether it be with a customer, a co-worker, an employee, a business partner, or a supplier. The only loser should be your competitor."