Lenovo forms NetApp partnership to take the fight to rivals

Lenovo's data centre partnership with NetApp has already stirred interest from the hardware player's channel as it takes the fight to rival Dell EMC.

The two firms revealed that they would be working together at the Lenovo Transform 2.0 event, which has been taking place this week in New York.

The vendors will be bringing flash storage products to market and includes a joint venture in China to deliver localised solutions for that market.

Kirk Skaugan, executive vice-president and president of the datacentre group at Lenovo, said the NetApp partnership would significantly broaden and solidifies the company's growth in the datacentre business and help to improve profitability.

Skaugen said Lenovo was operating in every market such as telcos, MRI scanners ultrasound, wind turbines and embedded Xeon edge devices.

"We have segment general managers who do road map planning right from go to market to end of life. Each will have a different relationship with NetApp and we go aggressively against DELL-EMC and HPE. I have never seen so much interest from our channel partners," he said.

"We are committed to success of existing and future channel partner who can use the NetApp tie-up as competitive weapon to win against Dell-EMC and HPE- our channel ecosystem is highly complementary and there is minimal overlap," he added.

Lenovo also used Tranform to reveal its ThinkShield security offering, which it has worked on with Intel. MobileIron and Absolute.

There was also a laptop launch with the firm adding the ThinkPad X1 Extreme to the high end range aiming it at 'advanced users and prsumers'.

“Today, we share industry leading partnership and product announcements, reinforcing our dedication to realizing the great potential of Intelligent Transformation," said Yang Yuanqing, CEO of Lenovo.

"Lenovo is a business ready for the future, and we are a partner helping to drive intelligent transformation with companies globally, every single day," he added.