A while back, we published an article about how Everpure has developed its own cloud offering over the years. What started as a minor component with little focus has now become a potential foot in the door for the company. But how does Everpure plan to compete in the public cloud with NetApp, a company that has long distinguished itself in this space?
When discussing the public cloud and its integration into on-premises environments, in the world where Everpure operates, the conversation quickly turns to NetApp. That company has been making a name for itself for years with its deep integrations with the three major hyperscalers. Azure NetApp Files, FSx for NetApp ONTAP, and Google Cloud NetApp Volumes are native integrations with Azure, AWS, and GCP, respectively. In addition, there’s also Cloud Volumes ONTAP, which is designed to enable customers to optimize cloud storage in terms of performance and cost, all within the same ONTAP OS that customers are already familiar with.
We wrote our previous article on Everpure Cloud after speaking with Dan Kogan, VP of Cloud at Everpure, during Pure Accelerate, Everpure’s annual event. During that conversation, we also asked him some questions about how he sees Everpure’s offerings competing with those of NetApp.
How does Everpure compare to NetApp?
When asked how Everpure plans to compete with NetApp in the public cloud, Kogan is clear: “NetApp isn’t really a competitor in this area, because they offer something completely different.” In particular, he sees a fundamental difference in how the native integrations with the public clouds work. The native integrations offered by NetApp are not NetApp services, but rather products and services from Azure, AWS, and GCP. At Everpure, the only native integration so far, the one with Azure, is still an Everpure service, even though you deploy and manage it via the Azure console.
According to Kogan, this distinction is important because it has implications for how well the services integrate into a larger concept such as the Enterprise Data Cloud. The idea is that this works much better when everything is under Everpure’s management. Incidentally, during our conversation, Kogan had nothing negative to say about the quality of NetApp’s native integrations. In fact, “if you look solely at the cloud business, NetApp is doing a fantastic job,” he says.
Is Cloud Volumes ONTAP underutilized?
Kogan is quite critical when it comes to NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP (CVO). According to him, it’s hardly used by organizations at all. We understand why he says this, because based on what we’ve heard, Everpure Cloud Azure Native also seems to be aiming to compete strongly with CVO. In other words, the way Everpure is positioning it in the market resembles how NetApp positions Cloud Volumes ONTAP. There is a strong emphasis on FinOps, or cost optimization. Incidentally, this is also part of NetApp’s native components that are offered and managed by the hyperscalers themselves, but that’s beside the point.
It is not easy to verify Kogan’s claim regarding CVO. When we asked NetApp for a response, the company provided general information about what it calls its Public Cloud business. In its most recent annual financial results for FY26, NetApp reported revenue of $688 million from Public Cloud, an 18 percent increase compared to the previous year. According to NetApp, this growth comes from “first-party and marketplace cloud services.” First-party refers to the native integrations with the three hyperscalers, while CVO falls under marketplace cloud services.
At $688 million, revenue from the Public Cloud business is already quite substantial. NetApp’s total annual revenue is $6.9 billion. It is not clear exactly how much of the $688 million is attributable to CVO. We assume that the first-party share is larger than the CVO share. After all, the hyperscalers sell this themselves (as well). When asked, a NetApp spokesperson also stated that CVO is a “widely used enterprise storage solution” worldwide.
Offerings vary
NetApp is undoubtedly still ahead of Everpure when it comes to integrations with public cloud providers. Both CVO and the first-party offering are available across the three major hyperscalers. This makes sense, as NetApp focused heavily on the public cloud relatively early on, while Everpure, so to speak, stumbled into it by a stroke of luck.
Based on what we’ve heard so far, Everpure Cloud, and specifically Everpure Cloud Azure Native, appears to offer something that falls between NetApp’s Cloud Volumes ONTAP and NetApp’s native integrations with the three major hyperscalers. On the one hand, Everpure Cloud is a native service on Azure, but it remains under Everpure’s management. On the other hand, it also includes features reminiscent of NetApp’s CVO.
What does this mean for customers?
Given the positioning described above, Kogan’s assertion that Everpure Cloud doesn’t really compete with NetApp’s offerings is defensible from a technical perspective. We wonder, however, whether this actually makes a difference for customers in practice. They’re simply looking for solutions to store data in the cloud at the lowest possible cost. Of course, the data must also be secure and well-protected. Finally, integration into an overarching ecosystem can also play an important role.
Both Everpure and NetApp offer what we’ve described above, although there are differences in implementation. In addition, Everpure still has quite a bit of work to do to make its own offering natively available on other public clouds. It becomes interesting when a large organization that runs entirely on NetApp on-premises purchases Everpure in the cloud to (among other things) optimize costs. In that case, we can assume that this organization is deliberately ignoring NetApp’s solutions.
From what Kogan tells us, the latter seems to be happening from time to time. That could mean that Everpure’s offering on Azure is so distinctive that customers are purchasing public cloud services from Everpure that NetApp could, in principle, also provide.
NetApp customers’ choice of Everpure for the cloud could, of course, stem from a variety of reasons. It doesn’t necessarily need to be because of the slightly different positioning of Everpure Cloud compared to NetApp’s offerings. Perhaps it’s because the performance is better. That is, the compression capabilities might be better (in specific cases), resulting in lower cloud costs. It’s also possible that customers view cloud data storage as fundamentally different from on-premises storage. In that case, it’s not necessarily obvious to purchase both from the same provider.
Will Everpure Cloud continue to gain traction?
Judging by what Kogan says, Everpure Cloud is making significant strides. The ambition is certainly to continue moving forward with this.
Of course, when it comes to native services on hyperscalers, the company is dependent on those hyperscalers. That is to say, they must also be willing to partner up to offer something together. AWS, for example, doesn’t seem interested in this, according to Kogan (see also the previous article on Everpure Cloud). Google, on the other hand, is interested, and Oracle also seems receptive to the idea.
We cannot yet call Everpure Cloud a full-fledged alternative to NetApp’s offerings without broader support. So Everpure still has some work to do. One thing is certain: the days when the public cloud was just a side project at Everpure are over for good.