Microsoft, NetApp Tag Team on Cloud, Storage

Microsoft and NetApp are aiming to cash in on customers' growing demand for datacenter solutions that cut costs and boost performance, teaming up to provide integrated offerings in the realms of cloud computing, virtualization and data storage and management apps. Enterprise Storage Forum takes a look.

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NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) announced a new three-year pact that will improve the technical integration between the two companies' cloud computing, virtualization and data storage and management applications.

NetApp and Microsoft officials said that in addition to the product collaboration efforts, they will also extend their joint sales and marketing programs in support of new and existing software applications.

"The NetApp and Microsoft alliance has helped thousands of enterprise customers around the world do more with less," NetApp CEO Tom Georgens said in a statement. "We are excited about the opportunity we have to build on this success and together help our mutual customers design and implement truly dynamic datacenters that can dramatically reduce costs and increase availability, flexibility, and ease of use."

The partnership will include collaboration and integration of all virtualization infrastructure applications running on Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, Microsoft Systems Center and NetApp storage systems.

Read the full story at Enterprise Storage Forum