NetApp added new Kubernetes and cloud data services to its hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) in a move to essentially make on-premises HCI deployments look like just another public cloud region.

“I always joke about [HCI] as being the fourth cloud,” said Jennifer Meyer, VP of cloud data services marketing. “We’re helping to build this seamless hybrid cloud experience and take a lot of the great [intellectual property] NetApp has developed internally and meet the customer where they are.”

To do this, NetApp focused on three areas — public cloud, private cloud, and its data fabric — so customers can deploy services and manage and store their data in a unified manner across all of their IT environments, she explained.

The vendor also announced it’s moving into consumption-based pricing (following similar moves by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Dell Technologies, and other companies) to further make on-premises infrastructure more cloud like.

NetApp launched its HCI product two years ago, and its executives like to say that HCI stands for "hybrid cloud." The new services that can be deployed on NetApp’s HCI include NetApp Kubernetes Service on NetApp HCI and Cloud Volumes on NetApp HCI. The Kubernetes service provides an automated Kubernetes deployment engine, application marketplace, and application orchestration with NetApp HCI as a deployable region. Cloud Volumes is NetApp’s persistent storage product that is available across all major public clouds, and it extends on premises with NetApp HCI.

“We’re bringing more of a public cloud experience on [premises] and meeting the needs of developers to build their applications anywhere they want,” Meyer said.

The vendor also updated its Cloud Data Services portfolio. These are its data management and storage services delivered across public clouds. It announced a beta release of Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud, which is a fully managed, pay-as- you-go data service. NetApp now offers these managed services across AWS, Azure, and Google.

It also announced new Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Google Cloud. This storage product targets organizations that need to run their business-critical applications in Google Cloud.

NetApp’s data fabric is a key differentiator to its HCI, essentially making this product composable infrastructure. It’s also the technology that allows NetApp customers to build a seamless multi-cloud experience because they can use it to discover, integrate, automate, optimize, and secure their data and applications.

For its data fabric, the vendor today announced a new fabric orchestration toolset, called the Fabric Orchestrator, which provides a cloud data service to help customers discover, manage, automate, and govern all of their data, no matter where it resides.

“We know that customers’ data is spread around the world,” Meyer said. “What we see today is they have people deployed across those locations to set policies and processes in how that data is used or accessed. With the Fabric Orchestrator, one person can set policies and automate them across environments.”

And finally, NetApp moved into pay-per-use infrastructure for its HCI and Cloud Volumes Services on premises. This means the vendor owns and manages the on-premises infrastructure making it more “cloud like,” Meyer said. And the customer essentially rents and only pays for what they use, based on capacity and performance, via a monthly bill.

It also made its Cloud Insights service available as a free basic edition for NetApp HCI and all-flash storage systems.