NetApp - The company behind the team
Since the team's formation in 2009, the hightech company NetApp is its main sponsor and name giver. Founded in 1992 in California, USA, NetApp today is the second largest provider of storage and data management solutions for companies and public bodies of any size. With over 11,000 employees and more than 150 offices all over the world NetApp has been recognized as a top employer in various countries for many years.
The investment into a young cycling team is directly linked to NetApp's corporate culture. Values such as "Teamspirit", "Go beyond", "Leadership" and "Getting things done" determine the company's behavior on each level and drive as well the motivation to support a continental team of promising young talents: NetApp wanted to build a new team from scratch, free from any ties to the past and therefore offers its cyclists all opportunities to gain ProTour status under their own steam and, though an ambitious target, to finally race the Tour de France. Another reason for NetApp's commitment is to bring more emotion into the hightech world and to give customers, partners and employees the opportunity to live and experience jointly a fascinating sport.
Along with Apple, Amazon, ebay, Google and Huawei, NetApp is one of six companies worldwide sporting an annual growth rate of more than 20 percent - although the stock exchange star has nothing to do with consumer goods but is a business brand. Whether it's movies like "The Lord of the Rings" and "Shrek" or Formula 1 racing cars of Lotus Renault or Sauber, NetApp solutions have helped to create them. More than one billion end users get their data from cloud services built on NetApp storage. Yahoo!, for example, serves Yahoo! eMail or Yahoo! calendar users off NetApp systems. Last but not least, NetApp is a long-standing partner of RCS Media Group (Giro d'Italia) and Amaury Sport Organisation (Tour de France), which are two out of three major organizers of bicycle races.
With its recent successes Team NetApp has set a signal not only in cycling, but as well for its main sponsor who in turn is on the way to the # 1 storage vendor in Europe.
