The hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) has become mainstream. It’s now a common architecture and infrastructure to put in your data center and remote locations. The next step is towards supporting DevOps teams and application development and the next evolution of HCI is around the enablement of both virtual and containerized infrastructure-as-a-service deployment in enterprises. That’s where cloud-native technologies like Kubernetes play a critical role in the HCI space. To cater to this market, NetApp has joined Rancher Lab’s newly announced OEM partner program. To learn more about the HCI market and this partnership, I spoke with McClain Buggle, Senior Director of Product Management at NetApp and Jim Sarale, Vice President, Global Channels and Alliances at Rancher Labs.

NetApp specializes in helping customers get the most out of their data with industry-leading cloud data services, storage systems, and software. We enable customers to build their own data fabric and securely deliver the right data, services and applications to the right people—anytime, anywhere.

Rancher Labs delivers open source software that enables organizations to deploy and manage Kubernetes at scale, on any infrastructure across the data center, cloud, branch offices, and the network edge. With 37,000 active users and greater than 100 million downloads, their flagship product, Rancher, is the industry’s most widely adopted Kubernetes management platform.