What’s NetApp’s Industry Outlook?

NetApp’s (NTAP) latest quarterly results continued the management’s narrative that the company’s execution strategy is striking the right chord with customers. And NetApp CEO George Kurian pointed this out when the company released its fiscal 1Q18 (June quarter) results earlier this month.

“Customers and industry leaders are excited by our strategic direction and are choosing NetApp as their partner for data-driven digital transformations,” Kurian said. He added that NetApp is building a strong foundation, and went further to say that NetApp was the “best positioned and the best executing company in the industry.”

It is difficult to doubt Kurian considering NetApp’s clean earnings track record since he became CEO in 2015. To drive long-term growth, Kurian is focusing NetApp on next-generation storage solutions. NetApp acquired flash storage startup SolidFire in 2015 to help strengthen its position in the flash memory products market. The company also said at the time of the acquisition that it would leverage SolidFire’s technology in its next-generation of hyperconvergence products.

NetApp is facing off with Dell Technologies (DVMT), VMware (VMW), and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) in the hyperconvergence market.

As NetApp pushes into the next-generation data storage space, it is important to understand what it is pursuing. Market Research Future forecasts that the next-generation data storage market will be worth $148.6 billion by 2022, up from $45.1 billion in 2015, as illustrated in the chart above.

NetApp is also battling it out with Western Digital (WDC) and Pure Storage (PSTG) in the regular data storage market.