CxO Decision Brief: Modern Data Services for the Hybrid Enterprise v1

This GigaOm CxO Decision Brief commissioned by NetApp.

Modern enterprises operate by default in hybrid environments, balancing cloud agility with on-premises control. Yet storage services—the backbone of countless applications—are often fragmented, inconsistent, or bolted on. This undermines modernization efforts and creates hidden operational risk. What’s needed is a strategic, unified approach to data management: one that scales efficiently, enforces consistent control, and aligns with evolving enterprise demands across cloud and data center environments.

Unified, intelligent block, file, and object storage services have become a foundation for modern data management strategies. They enable consistent policy enforcement, operational visibility, and secure data mobility across the hybrid estate. For CIOs, this consistency is key to balancing transformation with governance—supporting innovation without introducing fragmentation or platform debt.

Solutions that deliver this capability share several characteristics:

• A common control plane across on-premises and cloud environments

• Integrated security, automation, and data protection features

• Native support for hybrid workflows without requiring teams to relearn tooling or rebuild governance

NetApp’s cloud-native storage service—delivered via Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP—embodies these characteristics. Built on a widely adopted enterprise architecture, it extends familiar data service capabilities to the cloud while maintaining operational consistency and offering optional unified control via NetApp control plane. Its intelligent tiering, snapshotting, and policy-based automation enable secure, scalable file services without sacrificing enterprise governance.

The combination of NetApp’s intelligent data infrastructure and AWS managed service model offers a compelling approach for CIOs seeking to modernize hybrid operations while preserving control and reducing complexity. This architecture supports key initiatives—from AI readiness and global collaboration to secure data lifecycle management—without forcing tradeoffs between agility and resilience. 

Modern IT environments are hybrid by default. Cloud-smart strategies are now the norm, and file services—long treated as infrastructure plumbing—have become a strategic enabler of agility, resilience, and governance. CIOs must now decide how file services are extended, unified, and secured across environments—not only to boost performance, but to avoid fragmentation and operational debt.

Urgency

Cloud modernization is already underway across most enterprises. But as teams move to meet development, AI, and regulatory requirements, siloed decisions about file services can introduce unintended complexity. Inconsistent tooling, governance gaps, and duplicate infrastructure can often follow. CIOs face an inflection point: adopt a unified file strategy now, or face more difficult and costly retrofits later.

Delays heighten the risk of platform drift, where decentralized teams implement cloud-native solutions that cannot be governed, protected, or scaled effectively. Technical debt becomes operational risk. Early strategic alignment on file services enables faster, smoother transformation without compromise.

Risk

Without a unified file services approach, organizations face multidimensional risks:

• Operational risk: Tooling sprawl, inconsistent performance, and manual overhead increase the likelihood of failure, especially at scale.

• Governance risk: Inconsistent access policies and compliance controls erode trust and introduce audit exposure.

• Financial risk: Poor workload placement, overprovisioning, and redundant solutions inflate TCO and undercut ROI.

• Strategic risk: Decisions made without an architectural foundation may constrain future innovation, limit agility, and require expensive remediation.

In this context, the question is not whether to modernize file services, but how. CIOs who act decisively can establish a unified, scalable foundation. Those who delay may become locked into fragmented environments that slow down, rather than accelerate, digital initiatives.

Modernizing file services isn’t just about operational efficiency; it’s about enabling the business to move faster with less risk. A unified approach to hybrid data management simplifies infrastructure, strengthens governance, and supports scalable innovation. For CIOs, the benefits are both strategic and structural: better control, lower complexity, and improved alignment across teams.

Key benefits include:

• Consistent operations across environments
  A unified platform provides a single operational model, streamlining policy enforcement, automation, and visibility across on-premises and cloud environments.

• Faster, more resilient workload execution
  Intelligent data services—such as automated tiering, snapshotting, and replication—reduce overhead and improve recoverability.

• Improved compliance and governance alignment
  Integrated and common controls reduce the burden on security teams and support auditable, repeatable practices.

• Reduced platform sprawl and technical debt
  A single, scalable architecture eliminates the need for duplicative solutions, point tools, and bespoke integrations.

• Better cost control through smarter provisioning
  Thin provisioning, usage-based billing, and built-in efficiency mechanisms reduce overprovisioning and improve TCO.

Solutions like Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP exemplify these benefits in practice—offering a consistent, policy-aligned platform that supports enterprise-scale hybrid operations without fragmenting control. For CIOs, this model transforms IT into a force for alignment across infrastructure, operations, and governance.

Implementing modern file services in a hybrid environment is as much an architectural and organizational decision as it is a technical one. Success depends on more than adopting the right tools; it also requires intentional alignment between infrastructure, security, and operational priorities.

For CIOs, the path forward includes guiding principles that balance modernization with control:

• Treat file services as foundational, not peripheral
  File infrastructure should be designed into cloud and data strategies—not retrofitted after application or platform decisions are made.

• Prioritize governance and automation together
  Build environments where access control, lifecycle policies, and data protection are automated by design—not handled as manual afterthoughts.

• Drive convergence across teams
  Engage infrastructure, security, and operations leadership early to align on shared metrics for resilience, recoverability, and service-level expectations.

• Validate cloud readiness with operational pilots
  Use targeted deployments to test performance, visibility, and governance in hybrid workflows before scaling broadly.

• Architect for extensibility, not just compatibility
  Choose platforms that support growth across geographies, workloads, and regulatory conditions without requiring rearchitecture.

For CIOs, these practices offer more than efficiency. They represent a pathway to strategic consistency across a fragmented operating landscape. The goal is not just technical modernization, but a rebalancing of agility and control across the organization’s data management environment.

Adopting a unified data services architecture represents more than a technical upgrade. It is a shift in how teams coordinate, how risk is managed, and how infrastructure is governed. For CIOs, it introduces both operational leverage and the need for intentional change management across roles, skills, and investment models.

People Impact

Modernizing storage services can reshape team structures and workflows. Roles traditionally divided between infrastructure and operations may begin to converge around shared automation, observability, and policy enforcement responsibilities. Security and compliance teams also become more deeply involved in platform discussions.

NetApp’s ONTAP foundation—and its availability through FSx for ONTAP—can help ease this transition. Familiarity with ONTAP reduces training effort, while a managed service delivery minimizes the need to build deep cloud-native expertise in-house. This mitigates organizational friction and accelerates operational alignment.

This simplicity also opens the door for broader organizational participation. Teams without traditional storage expertise—such as developers and data engineers—can deliver results using FSx for ONTAP. One such example (available from NetApp) is Infor, where application teams with no storage background successfully drove measurable outcomes. For CIOs, this can expand the talent pool capable of advancing modernization goals. 

Relative to the CIO, the shift is less about reorganization and more about ensuring teams collaborate around shared service definitions and measurable recovery, availability, and control outcomes.

Investment Outlook

Data services modernization typically follows an OpEx-driven cost model, especially when delivered through managed cloud services. Rather than large capital purchases, organizations adopt usage-based billing aligned to actual consumption and scaling patterns.

For enterprises with existing ONTAP deployments, extending to FSx for ONTAP is a low-barrier initiative. It requires no new architecture, minimal retraining, and fits with existing skill sets. It is also a low-friction execution path, with most implementation efforts focused in integration, configuration, and policy extension—not replatforming.

The greatest ROI comes from consolidation and control: reducing point solutions, eliminating duplicate tooling, and avoiding downstream rework tied to fragmentation. CIOs who make file services part of the modernization architecture, and not just a downstream dependency, position IT to drive long-term operational leverage and agility.

While adopting unified file services is a significant architectural shift, implementation is typically straightforward—especially for organizations already using ONTAP. The key is to treat deployment as a modernization enabler, not just a technical upgrade.

Implementation complexity is generally moderate, but the timeline varies based on the organization’s existing infrastructure, operating model, and familiarity with NetApp ONTAP.

Organizations that already use ONTAP or have established hybrid environments should find the transition to be relatively quick—often completing pilot-to-production rollout in weeks rather than months. In these cases, most work will focus on integration, configuration, and validating policies rather than a rearchitecture.

For organizations migrating from legacy systems or introducing hybrid operations for the first time, adoption will likely require broader coordination, stakeholder alignment, and more deliberate policy development, resulting in a longer transition time. While timelines will vary, most implementations can follow a phased rollout, starting with target workloads and expanding over time to minimize disruption and build operational confidence.

In either case, treating file services modernization as a parallel effort—aligned with other infrastructure and security initiatives—can accelerate outcomes and reduce risk.

Future Considerations

Hybrid and cloud-first, or cloud-smart, environments will continue evolving, driven by AI adoption, edge computing, and increasing regulatory constraints in data localization. Data management services must keep pace with these demands, not just in scale, but also in intelligence.

Solutions that integrate advanced data services—such as automated tiering, security-aware access, and global policy enforcement—will better position IT in meeting emerging requirements without sacrificing control.

The ongoing investment between NetApp and AWS in these capabilities—delivering the ONTAP architecture as a managed service—reinforces NetApp’s role as a modernization partner, not simply a storage provider. For organizations anticipating continued cloud expansion or rising data demands, building on a file services foundation designed for extensibility ensures architectural leverage, not technical debt.

Hybrid infrastructure is the enterprise norm, yet file services often remain underleveraged in modernization efforts. Decisions about how data is stored, accessed, secured, and governed directly impact business agility, operational resilience, and regulatory posture. For CIOs, unified services represent a rare opportunity: a chance to simplify infrastructure while strengthening cross-functional control.

NetApp’s cloud-native storage services—delivered via Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP—reflect a thoughtful approach to this challenge. By extending familiar capabilities into a fully managed cloud service, it offers consistency without compromise, enabling organizations to modernize without rebuilding or retraining from scratch.

More importantly, it signals a shift in how infrastructure is viewed—evolving from siloed systems into strategic platforms for governance, mobility, and scale. CIOs who incorporate data services into their modernization roadmaps will be better positioned to support AI initiatives, accelerate cloud transformation, and avoid the complexity tax that often accompanies rapid change.

Modern data management requires alignment—across platforms, teams, and governance models. Solutions that support this convergence while reducing risk and operational drag will be the ones that endure.

This is where NetApp stands out: not simply as a storage vendor, but as a data infrastructure partner purpose-built for the hybrid enterprise.

This GigaOm CxO Decision Brief analyzes a specific technology and related solution to provide executive decision-makers with the necessary information to drive successful IT strategies that align with the business. The report focuses on large impact zones often overlooked in technical research, yielding enhanced insight and mitigating risk. We work closely with vendors to identify the value and benefits of specific solutions and to lay out best practices that enable organizations to drive a successful decision process.

Darrel is an industry veteran with several decades of experience bridging technology and business disciplines with designed-for-purpose enablement of people and process to drive desired business outcomes. He’s an expert in Cloud, Infrastructure, Data Management and Governance, Sales and Marketing, Product Management and Technical Leadership. For thirty-seven years, he served as a technical leader at Hitachi, driving their Technical Sales department and providing Data Infrastructure Solutions. He’s been an IT advisory board member at Regis University, a board advisor at the University of Colorado, and is a founding member of the Colorado Institute of Technology.

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