Item 1. Business

Overview

NetApp ®, Inc. (NetApp, we or us) is a leader in data insight, access and control for hybrid cloud environments. We provide global organizations the ability to manage and share their data across on-premises, private and public clouds. We were incorporated in 1992 and are headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.

NetApp, together with our partners, provides a full range of enterprise-class solutions that customers use to modernize their infrastructures, build next generation data centers and harness the power of hybrid clouds. We continue to pioneer a Data Fabric platform that allows infrastructure experts, cloud architects, developers and CIOs to easily and securely unite and manage data across the widest variety of environments.

Customer Business and IT Needs

In a world where technology is changing our everyday lives, digital transformation tops the strategic agenda in most organizations. For organizations to be successful in their digital transformations, data must become the lifeblood of an organization, seamlessly flowing through it to optimize operations, create innovative business opportunities and enable new customer touchpoints through technology. Correspondingly, IT leaders are under tremendous pressure to harness today’s wealth of data and apply it to create new value across the entire organization—all with limited time, skills and budget.

Building a data-centric organization is no small undertaking. No longer is data locked away on devices hidden behind firewalls. Instead, it is becoming distributed, dynamic and diverse. Thriving in this environment requires a holistic approach to data insight, access and control that is secure, efficient, future-proof and provides freedom of choice.

To help our customers and partners manage and share their data across on-premises, and private and public clouds, we are:

	•	Focusing on the customer by delivering an exceptional customer experience and becoming their preferred data partner; and

	•	Extending our cloud integration and hybrid cloud leadership through the NetApp Data Fabric platform and expanding our consumption model offerings to match customer needs across cloud and on-premises offerings.

The NetApp Data Fabric

The NetApp Data Fabric is a platform designed to simplify, automate and evolve the management of data. Data Fabric empowers our customers to seamlessly liberate, integrate and unleash the full potential of their data in a cloud, hybrid and on-premises world.

Built for the challenges and opportunities of the data-centric world, NetApp products and solutions are designed for simplicity and optimized to manage, protect and secure data. Because the Data Fabric platform is open by design, we can constantly fuel innovation and flexibility.

Our products and solutions portfolio centers on the digital transformation phases through which our customers are progressing: modernizing storage and data management, building next generation data centers and harnessing the power of hybrid cloud.

Product, Services and Solutions Portfolio

Flash

Flash plays a key role in customers’ digital transformation efforts as they seek to gain advantage through greater speed, responsiveness and value from key business applications, while lowering total cost of ownership. All-flash array technology is the de facto choice for primary application workloads as customers seek performance and economic benefits by replacing hard disk installations. With a highly differentiated and broad portfolio of all-flash and hybrid array offerings, NetApp is well positioned to enable customers to accomplish this transition.

All-Flash Arrays

The AFF A-Series All-Flash Arrays supply enterprise class scale-out all flash storage, harnessing the power of ONTAP and OnCommand software to deliver the industry’s most advanced data management and protection, along with high efficiency, performance and availability. The AFF A-Series is also the fastest enterprise All-Flash storage in the smallest package available in today’s market. The first generation of our All-Flash Array line, AFF8000 systems delivers all-flash performance with best-in-class data management. Through FlashEssentials software optimizations, we increase flash performance and efficiency. AFF models can be ordered as standalone systems and as a converged infrastructure validated design. Professional services, delivered by NetApp or its partners, help users identify those workloads that are best served by all-flash systems.

SolidFire All-Flash Arrays deliver fully automated agility and guaranteed application performance at web scale so customers can achieve the next-generation data center. The NetApp SolidFire SF-Series 19210 decreases the cost of all-flash arrays by offering the highest density and lowest cost per GB/IOPS, making it well suited for heavily virtualized and cloud infrastructures.

EF-Series all-flash arrays deliver fast, consistent response times to accelerate high-performance databases and data analytics. NetApp SANtricity Plug-Ins for Microsoft, Oracle, Splunk and VMware provide a consolidated view of the NetApp EF-Series systems, enabling users to monitor and manage their NetApp EF-Series storage from the application, reducing the total cost of ownership by eliminating the need to manually compile critical information from several different tools.

With our all-flash array portfolio, NetApp is enabling customers to modernize storage and data management to boost performance in their traditional data centers, while mapping out their move to a hybrid cloud.

Hybrid Flash Arrays

NetApp hybrid flash storage serves customers who want the option to deploy the speed of flash storage where they need it while using more affordable hard disk drives to address capacity requirements. NetApp hybrid arrays include the FAS series of unified storage systems and the E-Series of block storage offerings.

Converged Infrastructure

Due to budget constraints and skill imbalances, our customers need greater support from their technology partners to evaluate, integrate, deploy and sustain the sophisticated solutions they need to stay competitive. This trend is driving the demand for converged infrastructure solutions that reduce the time of deployment and lower integration risk.

Backed by one of the most successful alliances in the industry, FlexPod has become the converged infrastructure of choice for many of the largest enterprises around the globe. FlexPod is a portfolio of pre-validated, integrated infrastructure solutions that combine the Cisco Unified Computing System integrated infrastructure and NetApp storage components. Today, customers and partners can choose from more than 100 validated application and infrastructure designs. These solutions are designed and validated to reduce deployment time, project risk and the cost of IT. The portfolio is validated with leading hypervisors, operating systems, systems management tools and cloud management platforms for major enterprise workloads such as Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, Openstack and Docker.

Hybrid Cloud

NetApp believes that the hybrid cloud is fast becoming the dominant model for enterprise IT. Customers are attracted by the speed and scale benefits of the public cloud but need new data management capabilities to keep control of data as it moves beyond the walls of the enterprise. Our Data Fabric platform enables our customers to manage, secure and protect their data from on-premises to public to hybrid clouds, all at the scale needed to accommodate the exponential data growth of the digital world.

ONTAP Cloud

The ONTAP Cloud storage data management service allows customers to build an enterprise storage service on Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) with Elastic Block Storage (EBS) with the flexibility to pay for only what a customer needs, when it needs it. In September 2016, we expanded this to support the Microsoft Azure public cloud. Whether customers want to move traditional database applications or legacy NAS applications to the cloud, ONTAP Cloud provides the data access, insights and control along the way.

NetApp Cloud Sync

NetApp Cloud Sync hybrid data management Software as a Service (“SaaS”) offering synchronizes customer data seamlessly and securely between on-premises or cloud storage and AWS Simple Storage Service (S3). Transfer times drop from hours to minutes.

NetApp Private Storage (NPS) for Cloud

NetApp Private Storage for Cloud is a family of enterprise storage solutions that lets customers use multiple industry-leading clouds and maintain complete control over their data on dedicated storage systems from NetApp while achieving the flexibility of the cloud for application and compute resources. In this approach, customer data resides on NetApp storage “next to”, rather than “in”, the cloud provider’s environment. The customer-owned NetApp system is co-located in data centers managed by our partner, Equinix, which has data centers located next to major networks and in close proximity to major cloud providers including AWS, Microsoft Azure and IBM SoftLayer.

AltaVault ® Cloud-integrated Solutions

With AltaVault, customers have the power to tap into cloud economics while preserving investments in existing backup infrastructure and meeting their backup and recovery service levels. AltaVault is offered in three deployment models to meet customer

needs. AltaVault physical appliances are often deployed in the data center to protect large volumes of data. These datasets typically require the highest levels of performance and scalability available. AltaVault virtual appliances, with support for VMware and Hyper-V, are an ideal solution for medium-sized businesses that want to get started with cloud backup or for enterprises that want to protect branch offices and remote offices with the same level of protection they enjoy in the data center. AltaVault cloud-based appliances on AWS and Azure are designed to offer an efficient and secure approach to backing up cloud-based workloads. Companies without a secondary data center or those looking for a low-cost tertiary recovery site also can use them for disaster recovery purposes.

NetApp Software Portfolio

OpenStack ® Contributions

NetApp is a Gold Member of the OpenStack Foundation, a global collaboration which supports the creation of an open-source cloud operating system. OpenStack is a global collaboration of developers and cloud computing technologists producing a ubiquitous open-source cloud computing platform for public and private clouds. NetApp storage integration with OpenStack makes deployment of cloud services simpler, faster and more scalable. NetApp drivers for OpenStack reduce the integration burden for IT departments deploying cloud services and enable high-value services and tight service-level agreements.

ONTAP Storage Operating System

In September 2016, we announced the latest release of our clustered ONTAP software, NetApp ONTAP 9. It simplifies customers’ digital transformations to next generation data centers and hybrid cloud environments. Customers can choose the architecture of their choice (engineered systems, software-defined storage or cloud), all with industry-leading efficiency, performance and density for flash environments; rapid and simplified deployment; and greater data protection and security. We continue to sell and support our legacy 7-mode Data ONTAP operating system for the decreasing number of installations that are not yet ready to move to ONTAP 9.

SANtricity Storage Operating System

In April 2016, we announced the newest release of the SANtricity OS, optimized for the new generations of data analytics applications. SANtricity provides superior performance, reliability and data protection for application-driven workloads that run on NetApp EF-Series and E-Series platforms. It allows customers to optimize performance on the fly, with adaptive caching algorithms to achieve high IOPS and throughput. Installed on over one million systems worldwide, the SANtricity OS is field-proven.

SolidFire Element Operating System

Announced in June 2016, NetApp’s newest version of Element OS delivers the industry’s most comprehensive enterprise feature set for creating a next generation data center. By consolidating multiple mixed workloads onto an agile, secure and automated infrastructure, Element OS 9 significantly improves flexibility and expands the range of use cases for SolidFire’s all-flash scale-out system.

Object Storage Software

NetApp StorageGRID ® Webscale software allows customers to store and manage massive amounts of data on premises and in the cloud. As a software-defined solution for media repositories, web data stores and large archives, the sophisticated policy engine provides automated data placement across storage tiers, physical sites and hybrid clouds. Real-time auditing provides continuous and active monitoring for service-level agreement verification and reporting. With support for Amazon S3, OpenStack Swift and NFS/SMB, it provides a scalable, highly durable object storage solution for primary storage and long-term archives.

NetApp Integrated Data Protection (IDP) Solutions

Embedded in ONTAP 9, our IDP solutions ensure customer data is available when and where it’s needed. Customers can scale their NetApp data protection capabilities across applications, virtual infrastructures and cloud architectures. They additionally benefit from controlled data access with secure multi-tenancy and military-grade (AES-256) encryption and proven key-management solutions.

Other critical IDP solutions include SnapMirror ® data replication technology; MetroCluster™ continuous-availability and disaster recovery software; SnapVault ® software for simplified backup and data recovery; SnapRestore ® data recovery software; and SnapLock ® compliance software.

OnCommand ® Management Software and Management Integration Tools

The NetApp OnCommand storage management software portfolio incorporates a broad range of data management tools for NetApp and multivendor storage. These products help our customers’ transition to the hybrid cloud. They improve visibility and allow customers to manage, monitor and optimize their hybrid cloud environments.

FlexArray ® Storage Virtualization Software

FlexArray software enables NetApp systems to virtualize existing EMC, HP, Hitachi and NetApp E-Series arrays to unify and streamline IT operations. Customers can transform existing arrays to create storage that spans private, public and hybrid clouds. It reduces capacity requirements on arrays by more than 35% and increases the usefulness of current storage.

Professional and Support Services

NetApp and our ecosystem of partners deliver a full portfolio of professional and technical services that enable customers to achieve greater business value from NetApp products and solution investments. Our professional services team and certified services partners have the expertise to assist customers with each phase of their IT lifecycle, from planning next-generation storage systems and deploying new technology to optimizing the operational efficiency of existing infrastructures.

Technical support services ensure our products operate efficiently and benefit from the most up-to-date software to help customers minimize downtime for systems running business-critical applications. Our services organization also provides in-depth guidance and education that include extensive access to our global technical resources and intellectual property. Customers can choose from a number of support options including direct touch, web-based My AutoSupport ® service, training on our product and solutions and an active online community of customers.

Sales, Principal Markets, and Distribution Channels

We market and sell our products in numerous countries throughout the world. To increase visibility of NetApp in the broader IT segment, we continue to make investments in our multi-year branding and awareness campaigns.

Our diversified customer base spans industry segments and vertical markets such as energy, financial services, government, high technology, internet, life sciences, healthcare services, manufacturing, media, entertainment, animation, video postproduction and telecommunications. NetApp focuses primarily on the data management and storage markets. We design our products to meet the needs of our broad customer base – from large enterprises to midsize customers.

NetApp uses a multichannel distribution strategy. We sell our products and services to end-user business customers and service providers through a direct sales force and an ecosystem of partners. We work with a wide range of partners for our customers, including technology partners, value-added resellers, system integrators, OEMs, service providers and distributors. During fiscal 2017, sales through our indirect channels represented 78% of our net revenues. Our global partner ecosystem is critical to NetApp’s growth and success. We are continually strengthening existing partnerships and investing in new ones to ensure we are meeting the evolving needs of our customers.

As of April 28, 2017, our worldwide sales and marketing functions consisted of approximately 5,100 managers, sales representatives and technical support personnel. We have field sales offices in approximately 45 countries. Sales to customers Arrow Electronics, Inc. and Avnet, Inc., which are distributors, accounted for 22% and 20% of our net revenues, respectively, in fiscal 2017. Information about sales to and accounts receivables from our major customers, segment disclosures, foreign operations and net sales attributable to our geographic regions is included in Note 16 – Segment, Geographic, and Significant Customer Information of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements

Seasonality

We have historically experienced a decline in revenues in the first quarter of our fiscal year, as the sales organization spends time developing new business after higher close rates in the fourth quarter, and because sales to European customers are historically weaker during the summer months. During the second quarter of our fiscal year, we have historically experienced increased sales, driven by the government sector, concurrent with the end of the U.S. federal government’s fiscal year in September, as well as an increase in business from European markets. We derive a majority of our revenue in any given quarter from orders booked in the same quarter. Bookings and revenues typically follow intra-quarter seasonality patterns weighted toward the back end of the quarter.

Backlog

We manufacture products based on a combination of specific order requirements and forecasts of our customers’ demand. Orders are generally placed by customers on an as-needed basis. A substantial portion of our products is sold on the basis of standard purchase orders that are cancellable prior to shipment without penalty. In certain circumstances, purchase orders are subject to change with respect to quantity of product or timing of delivery resulting from changes in customer requirements. Our business is characterized by seasonal and intra-quarter variability in demand, as well as short lead times and product delivery schedules. Accordingly, backlog at any given time might not be a meaningful indicator of future revenue.

Manufacturing and Supply Chain

We have outsourced manufacturing operations to third parties located in Memphis, Tennessee; San Jose, California; Guadalajara, Mexico; San Antonio, Texas; Schiphol Airport, The Netherlands; Komarom and Tiszaujvaros, Hungary; Wuxi and Tianjin, China; Taoyuan City, Taiwan; and Singapore. These operations include materials procurement, commodity management, component engineering, test engineering, manufacturing engineering, product assembly, product assurance, quality control, final test, and global logistics. We rely on a limited number of suppliers for materials, as well as several key subcontractors for the production of certain subassemblies and finished systems. We use multiple vendors and have our products manufactured in a number of locations wherever possible to mitigate our supply chain risk. Our strategy has been to develop close relationships with our suppliers, maximizing the exchange of critical information and facilitating implementation of joint quality programs. We use contract manufacturers for the production of major subassemblies and final system configuration. This manufacturing strategy minimizes capital investments and overhead expenditures while creating flexibility for rapid expansion.

We are certified to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9001:2008 and ISO 14001:2004 certification standards.

Research and Development

We conduct research and development activities in various locations throughout the world. Total research and development expenses were $779 million, $861 million and $920 million in fiscal 2017, 2016 and 2015, respectively. These costs consist primarily of personnel and related costs incurred to conduct product development activities. Although we develop many of our products internally, we may acquire technology through business combinations or through licensing from third parties when appropriate. We believe that technical leadership is essential to our success, and we expect to continue to commit substantial resources to research and development.

Competition

We compete with many companies in the markets we serve, including established public companies, newly public companies with a strong flash focus, and new market entrants addressing the growing opportunity for hyperconverged systems. Some offer a broad spectrum of IT products and services (full-stack vendors) and others offer a more limited set of storage and data management products or services.

Technology trends, such as the emergence of hosted (or cloud) storage, SaaS and flash storage are driving significant changes in storage architectures and solution requirements. Cloud service providers provide customers storage as an operating expense, rather than storage systems capital expenditures, for the customers’ data centers, which competes with more traditional storage offerings. While the short- and long-term impact of these evolving trends cannot be predicted, NetApp is confident that our customers recognize the value in our cloud and Data Fabric strategy. Our strategy includes integrating and building relationships with these new classes of providers, and to date, we have established relationships with more than 300 cloud service providers and hyperscaler providers, including AWS, Google, IBM SoftLayer and Microsoft Azure.

We compete against HPE, Dell Technologies, HDS and IBM, as well as Pure Storage and other smaller players. Our current and potential competitors may establish cooperative relationships among themselves or with third parties, including some of our partners. It is possible that new competitors or alliances among competitors might emerge and rapidly acquire significant market share.

We consider innovation and our technology partnerships key to our competitive differentiation. We believe our competitive advantage also includes the nature of the relationships we form with our customers and partners worldwide. We strive to deliver an outstanding experience in every interaction we have with our customers and partners through our product, service, and support offerings, which enable us to provide our customers with a full range of expertise before, during and after their purchase.

Proprietary Rights

NetApp generally relies on patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret and contract laws to establish and maintain our proprietary rights in our technology and products. While our intellectual property rights are important to our success, we believe that our business as a whole is not materially dependent on any particular patent, trademark, copyright, license or other intellectual property right. We have been granted or own by assignment over 2,100 patents issued by, and have over 640 patent applications pending with, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, as well as a corresponding number of international patents and patent applications. While the durations of our patents vary, we believe that the durations of our patents are adequate relative to the expected lives of our products.

NetApp, the NetApp logo, Active IQ, AltaVault, ASUP, AutoSupport, Campaign Express, Clustered Data ONTAP, Customer Fitness, Data ONTAP, DataMotion, Element, Fitness, Flash Accel, Flash Cache, Flash Pool, FlexArray, FlexCache, FlexClone, FlexPod, FlexScale, FlexShare, FlexVol, FPolicy, Fueled by SolidFire, GetSuccessful, Go Further, Faster, LockVault, Manage ONTAP, MetroCluster, MultiStore, NetApp Insight, OnCommand, ONTAP, ONTAPI, RAID DP, RAID-TEC, SANtricity, SecureShare, Simplicity, Simulate ONTAP, SnapCenter, Snap Creator, SnapCopy, SnapDrive, SnapIntegrator, SnapLock,

SnapManager, SnapMirror, SnapMover, SnapProtect, SnapRestore, Snapshot, SnapValidator, SnapVault, SolidFire, SolidFire Helix, SolidFire Helix Design, StorageGRID, SyncMirror, Tech OnTap, Unbound Cloud, WAFL and other names are trademarks or registered trademarks of NetApp Inc., in the United States and/or other countries.

We generally enter into confidentiality agreements with our employees, resellers, customers, and suppliers. In addition, through various licensing arrangements, we receive certain rights to intellectual property of others. We expect to maintain current licensing arrangements and to secure licensing arrangements in the future, as needed and to the extent available on reasonable terms and conditions, to support continued development and sales of our products and services. Some of these licensing arrangements require or might require royalty payments and other licensing fees. The amount of these payments and fees might depend on various factors, including but not limited to the structure of royalty payments; offsetting considerations, if any; and the degree of use of the licensed technology.

The industry in which we compete is characterized by rapidly changing technology, a large number of patents, and frequent claims and related litigation regarding intellectual property rights, and we may be exposed to various risks related to such claims or legal proceedings. If we are unable to protect our intellectual property, we might be subject to increased competition that could materially and adversely affect our operating results.

Environmental Disclosure

We are committed to the success of our customers and partners, to delivering value to our stockholders, and to positively affecting the communities where our employees work and live. We firmly believe that we can accomplish these objectives concurrently with our commitment to sustainability. We are committed to the prevention of pollution; efficient use of natural resources; and minimizing, relative to the growth of the company, the environmental impacts from our operations, products, and services, as well as complying with laws and regulations related to these areas. Our environmental management system provides the framework for setting, monitoring, and continuously improving our environmental goals and objectives.

We are voluntarily measuring, monitoring, and publicly reporting our scope 1 and scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions and participate in the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). The CDP is a global standardized mechanism by which companies report their greenhouse gas emissions to institutional investors. We promote alternative transportation programs through education and awareness campaigns, and we continuously seek to optimize the energy efficiency of our buildings, labs, and data centers. At both the global and regional/state levels, various laws and regulations have been implemented or are under consideration to mitigate the effects of climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Environmental laws are complex, change frequently, and have tended to become more stringent over time. It is often difficult to estimate the future impact of environmental matters. Based on current information, we believe that our primary risk related to climate change is the risk of increased energy costs. We are not subject to a cap and trade system or any other mitigation measures that could be material to our operations in the near future. Additionally, we have implemented disaster recovery and business resiliency measures to mitigate the physical risks our facilities, business, and supply chain might face as a consequence of severe weather-/climate-related phenomena such as earthquakes, floods, droughts, and other such natural occurrences.

We are also subject to other federal, state, and local regulations regarding workplace safety and protection of the environment. Various international, federal, state, and local provisions regulate the use and discharge of certain hazardous materials used in the manufacture of our products. Failure to comply with environmental regulations in the future could cause us to incur substantial costs or subject us to business interruptions. We believe we are substantially compliant with all applicable environmental laws. All of our products meet the requirements of the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH); Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE); Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS); and China RoHS directives. We have maintained an environmental management system since December 2004. As part of ISO 14001 requirements, we set local environmental performance goals such as reducing energy use per square foot and minimizing waste generated on site, that are aligned with our overall corporate strategy. We also conduct an annual review and third-party verified audits of our operations, and we monitor environmental legislation and requirements to help make sure we are taking necessary measures to remain in compliance with applicable laws, not only in our operations but also for our products.

Employees

As of April 28, 2017, we had approximately 10,100 employees world-wide. None of our employees are represented by a labor union and we consider relations with our employees to be good. Competition for technical personnel in the industry in which we compete is intense. We believe that our future success depends in part on our continued ability to hire, assimilate, and retain qualified personnel. To date, we believe that we have been successful in recruiting qualified employees, but there is no assurance that we will continue to be successful in the future.

Executive Officers

Our executive officers and their ages as of June 1, 2017, are as follows:

Name	Age	Position
George Kurian	50	Chief Executive Officer and President
Ronald J. Pasek	56	Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Henri Richard	59	Executive Vice President, Worldwide Field and Customer Operations
Joel D. Reich	58	Executive Vice President, Product Operations
Matthew K. Fawcett	49	Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary

George Kurian was appointed chief executive officer on June 1, 2015 and president on May 20, 2016. He joined our board of directors in June 2015. From September 2013 to May 2015, he was executive vice president of product operations, overseeing all aspects of technology strategy, product and solutions development across our product portfolio. Mr. Kurian joined NetApp in April 2011 as the senior vice president of the storage solutions group and was appointed to senior vice president of the Data ONTAP group in December 2011. Prior to NetApp, from 2002 to 2011, Mr. Kurian held several positions at Cisco Systems, including most recently vice president and general manager of the application networking and switching technology group. From 1999 to 2002, Mr. Kurian was the vice president of product management and strategy at Akamai Technologies. Prior to that, he was a management consultant with McKinsey and Company, and led software engineering and product management teams at Oracle Corporation. Mr. Kurian holds a BS degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University and an MBA from Stanford University.

Ronald J. Pasek joined NetApp in April 2016 as executive vice president and chief financial officer, overseeing the finance, customer leasing, workplace resources, internal audit, and IT functions. Mr. Pasek served as senior vice president, finance and chief financial officer of Altera Corporation, a worldwide provider of programmable logic devices, from December 2009 until its acquisition by Intel in December 2015. Mr. Pasek was previously employed by Sun Microsystems, where he most recently served as vice president and corporate treasurer. In his 19 years at Sun Microsystems, he also held a variety of other positions in finance, including vice president of worldwide field finance, worldwide manufacturing, and U.S. field finance. Mr. Pasek is the Chairman of the board of directors of Spectra7 Microsystems Inc., a Canadian publicly traded consumer connectivity company. Mr. Pasek holds a BS degree from San Jose State University and an MBA from Santa Clara University.

Henri Richard joined NetApp in May 2016 as executive vice president of worldwide field and customer operations, leading NetApp’s global field and customer success operations, which supports the company’s ecosystem of channel, alliance, and service partners and perform customer-facing functions. Before joining NetApp, from April 2013 to May 2016, he was senior vice president of worldwide sales and support at SanDisk Corporation. Prior to SanDisk, Mr. Richard served as senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing at Freescale Semiconductor from September 2007 to April 2013. Mr. Richard brings 30-years of experience serving in global executive roles at companies including Seagate, IBM, WebGain and AMD. He started his career in IT with Informatique Haute Performance in Paris, France, a company he founded. Mr. Richard was a member of the board of directors of Ultratech Inc., a formerly publicly traded advance packaging and laser processing company, until its acquisition by Veeco Instruments, Inc. in May 2017. Henri holds a bachelor of science degree from the Ecole Nationale de Radiotechnique et d’Electronique Appliquee in Asnieres, France.

Joel D. Reich joined NetApp in 2002 and was appointed executive vice president of product operations in June 2015. He is responsible for overseeing the strategy, development and manufacturing operations of the NetApp product and solutions portfolio. From April 2011 to June 2015, Mr. Reich served as NetApp’s senior vice president of the Hyperscale Storage Group. Before that time, he served in various NetApp Data ONTAP engineering leadership roles. Before joining NetApp, Joel was vice president of marketing and product operations for HighGround Systems, Inc. He also held the position of director of product management at Data General Corporation and EMC Corporation and was director of sales and marketing for Conner Peripherals Storage Systems Group. Mr. Reich holds a bachelor’s degree from Lehigh University.

Matthew K. Fawcett joined the company in September 2010 as senior vice president, general counsel, and secretary. Prior to joining NetApp, from 1999 to August 2010, Mr. Fawcett served in various legal positions at JDS Uniphase Corporation, an optical components company, including as senior vice president, general counsel, and corporate secretary. Prior to joining JDSU, Mr. Fawcett was counsel at Fujitsu and worked in private practice at Morrison & Foerster LLP. Mr. Fawcett is a member of the boards of the Association of Corporate Counsel and the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley. Mr. Fawcett holds a BA degree from the University of California at Berkeley and a JD degree from the University of California at Los Angeles.

Additional Information

Our Internet address is www.netapp.com. We make available through our Internet website our annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, amendments to those reports and other documents filed or furnished pursuant to the Exchange Act of 1934, as soon as reasonably practicable after we electronically file such materials with, or furnish them to, the SEC.

The SEC maintains an Internet site (www.sec.gov) that contains reports, proxy and information statements, and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC. The public also may read and copy these filings at the SEC’s Public Reference Room at 100 F Street N.E., Washington, DC 20549. Information about this Public Reference Room is available by calling (800) SEC-0330.