
NetApp is owned by NetApp, Inc., a publicly traded American data infrastructure company headquartered in San Jose, California and listed on NASDAQ under the ticker NTAP. Founders David Hitz, James Lau, and Michael Malcolm created the company and its storage products together in 1992. NetApp is both the company name and its flagship brand covering storage systems, ONTAP software, and cloud data services.
Parent Company
Founded
1992
Status
Publicly Traded
Headquarters
| Brand | Parent Company | Ownership Type |
|---|---|---|
| NetApp | NetApp, Inc. | Brand division |
David Hitz and James Lau, engineers at storage vendor Auspex Systems, teamed with Auspex executive Michael Malcolm in 1992 to build a dedicated file storage appliance in Santa Clara, California. Their first product, the FAServer filer, shipped in 1993 and gave enterprises a simpler alternative to general-purpose file servers.
Internet growth made NetApp one of the fastest-rising hardware companies of the late 1990s. The IPO came in November 1995 on NASDAQ, and the company survived the dot-com crash better than most storage peers because its customers had already diversified from web startups into mainstream enterprises.
The 2000s were spent moving upmarket and defending against EMC and Dell. A 2003 acquisition, Spinnaker Networks, supplied the clustering technology that became the basis of ONTAP 8, and software capabilities like deduplication and replication turned the filer into a data management platform. The 2008 rename to NetApp formalized the shorthand.
George Kurian became CEO in 2015 and redirected the company around hybrid cloud. NetApp built or bought cloud services including Spot and Instaclustr, and engineered partnerships deep enough that ONTAP-based file services now run as first-party offerings inside AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. All-flash arrays became the growth engine, reaching a $4.1 billion annualized run rate in fiscal 2025.
Record years followed. Revenue hit $6.57 billion in fiscal 2025 and $6.93 billion in fiscal 2026, and the company repositioned itself as data infrastructure for AI workloads, supplying the high-performance file storage behind GPU training clusters and enterprise retrieval systems.
What does NetApp own?
NetApp owns its storage and data services portfolio: ONTAP software, AFF and FAS storage arrays, StorageGRID, the Spot CloudOps suite, Instaclustr, and first-party cloud services offered with AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
Is NetApp publicly traded?
Yes. NetApp trades on NASDAQ under the ticker NTAP and is a member of the S&P 500. It has been public since its November 1995 IPO.
Who founded NetApp?
David Hitz, James Lau, and Michael Malcolm founded the company in 1992 in Santa Clara, California as Network Appliance, Inc. All three came from Auspex Systems. The company was renamed NetApp in 2008.
Where is NetApp headquartered?
NetApp is headquartered at 3060 Olsen Drive in San Jose, California. It relocated its headquarters from Sunnyvale to San Jose in 2021.
How many brands does NetApp own?
NetApp markets under one master brand. Its named product platforms are ONTAP, AFF, FAS, StorageGRID, Spot, and its cloud services delivered with the hyperscalers.
Who owns NetApp?
NetApp is owned by its public shareholders, with institutional investors including Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street holding the largest positions. No founder or single investor holds control.
NetApp has been a repeated presence on Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For list, including top-10 placements in the 2010s, and held Fortune 500 rank from 2012 to 2021. Gartner places it in the Leaders quadrant for primary storage, and the company holds more than 1,000 patents. Its first-party cloud services with AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud are frequently cited as the model for storage-cloud integration.
NetApp's record is clean of major consumer-facing controversies. It conducted several workforce reductions between 2023 and 2025 as part of restructuring, standard for enterprise hardware vendors managing the cloud transition.
The company disclosed a limited security incident in 2024 involving some customer data in its cloud services, reported without material impact. It has faced no significant antitrust, securities, or product safety actions of public record.
These competing brands operate in the same categories and provide similar products or services. Compare key attributes to understand market positioning and competitive landscape.
| Brand | Parent Company | Country | Founded | Market Position | Primary Market | Gender Target |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kyndryl | USA | 2021 | Mass market | Global | All Genders |
Market Positioning: NetApp competes with 1 brands in the same categories, ranging from mass market to luxury positioning.
Geographic Distribution: Competitors are headquartered across multiple regions, indicating global competition in this market segment.
Brand Heritage: Competitor brands range from established heritage brands to newer market entrants, with founding years spanning several decades.
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