For three decades, NetApp has been recognized as a leading data storage company, as a manufacturer of hardware and subsidiary software, until it gradually shifted to prioritize data management software, which would lead it to peek into the cloud through strong alliances by which the large providers Azure (Microsoft), Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services adopt their technology.
This is the current profile of the company: without giving up its natural space, much less its historical clientele, it advocates the transition to native cloud applications. This gradual turnaround requires an evolution of its catalog through internal developments and acquisitions that it has made in recent years, but also the restructuring of its external sales channel.
The pandemic, which has accelerated trends (good and bad) in the information technology (IT) sector, has left a positive mark on NetApp's accounts: in March it has completed eight consecutive quarters of upward growth in all the parameters of your business; at the close of the fiscal year, billing had increased by 13%, and profits. 28%. "It is the intention of the management team - says Jordi Botifoll, vice president and head of business in Iberia and Latin America - to double the size, not on a whim but because we detect signs that the market requires it. But, to get to that point, we needed a new organization and a different business approach”, he sums up.
Botifoll landed at NetApp in 2021, after a 22-year career at Cisco holding international positions, with the express mandate of materializing a move hitherto unusual in US companies: transferring responsibility for its business in Latin America from Miami to Madrid. The change means that the region is integrated into the same organizational structure as Europe. The fact that Spain and Portugal, as well as Italy and to a lesser extent France, are investors in the region generates synergies that do not always occur on the north-south axis. “This concept of ours is understood in Europe, a mosaic of countries [...] Apart from the similarities, I have to manage the differences: disparate commercial systems coexist in Latin America that are not appreciated in the same way when viewed from the US. ”.
In little more than a year of the new structure, “we have a collection of experiences that are replicable in both directions and that generate business for both NetApp and its customers. In particular, the energy sector has contracted services with public clouds that are based on our technology. This occurs at Repsol (Spain), Petrobras (Brazil) and Ecopetrol (Colombia). Likewise, in the banking sector, the experiences that NetApp has had with BBVA are being replicated in Mexico with Bancomer”.
The distributors that have worked together with NetApp in the on-premise market (local data centers) necessarily assimilate the concept of hybrid cloud that –according to Botifoll– finds a favorable environment in Latin America: “We accompany our clients in their relationships with service providers. cloud services, which for their part are extending their infrastructures in the region”.
Botifoll knows from experience that any strategy in Latin America must be medium or long term. One factor that plays in favor of the company is its offer as a service, according to installed capacity consumption. "I know that the opex model enjoys an acceptance in the region that is encouraged by an awareness of exchange rate instability that weighs on investment decisions."
