NetApp revenue grows 36% in Q1

Data storage vendor NetApp reported today on its revenue for the first quarter of 2011, stating total product sales grew 51% when compared with the same quarter last year; and overall revenue was up 36%.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company reported $1.14 billion in sales in the quarter, which ended July 30, compared with $838 million during the same period last year. Net income for the quarter was almost triple last year's first quarter. The company reported $142 million compared with $52 million for Q1 2010.

“Our results indicate we are achieving clear customer preference as IT organizations transform their data centers,” NetApp CEO Tom Georgens said in a statement.

NetApp's stock price closed at $39.32 a share on the Nasdaq stock market today, up $.67 cents, or 1.73%.

NetApp credited much of its growth to expanding its strategic relationships with Microsoft and other partners to offer a greater breadth of public and private cloud computing offerings.

NetApp's three-year agreement with Microsoft focuses on collaboration on virtualized infrastructure technology based on Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, Microsoft System Center and NetApp storage systems.

Through the collaboration, NetApp released NetApp SnapManager 6.0 for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and to help users transition to SharePoint 2010.

The company also partnered with VMware and Cisco to offer Fibre Channel over Ethernet certified networks for virtual server environments.

The FCoE protocol works by wrapping Fibre Channel packets in Ethernet headers to send them over traditional Ethernet networks while preserving the Fibre Channel protocol. Typically, because it is sharing bandwidth with traditional server traffic, FCoE systems operate over 10Gbit/sec Ethernet ports.

NetApp estimated revenue for its next quarter would be between $1.16 billion and $1.21 billion.