10. NetApp At A Crossroads

More than ever, the future of NetApp will be a burning issue in 2017. NetApp in 2016 showed signs of recovery from legacy issues that dogged it in the past, including readying strong cloud and all-flash storage strategies and moving past the difficult transition to its Clustered Ontap. And it seems to be on the road to solid growth for the first time in years.

But can an independent storage vendor, even the largest, NetApp, stay independent? With Dell's acquisition of EMC in the history books, NetApp is the only independent storage vendor of all the top vendors. And this is in a world where storage is increasingly tied to server infrastructures, or to the cloud, or anywhere where it is not as part of a traditional SAN. So look to NetApp being courted by a dwindling number of vendors that need a storage strategy, including Cisco, Oracle and Lenovo.