The Birth of NetApp Blue Report

Our NetApp Advanced Technology Group has recently generated documents called Blue Reports that contain technical 1) background 2) analysis and 3) guidance information on many emerging technology trends and threats. Many co-workers from different groups at NetApp have asked me about the thinking or rationale behind these blue reports. So, in this blog I will articulate the thinking behind these reports. I will first list the problems we are trying to solve and will then briefly describe the process and how we are trying to tackle these problems. The NetApp Blue Report and the process associated in generating it is trying to solve the following issues (in no particular order):

•Empower researchers: The one thing most PhD grads hate is being told what to work on. This is a common phenomenon that I have seen at multiple research labs. Therefore, it is very important to let researchers have a say in figuring out the project they should work on.

• Bring focus and prioritize research areas: One of the common problems faced by managers in research labs is that their employees want to work on all sorts of things. Many times it is very difficult to get synergy and momentum amongst the different projects. It is desirable to work on a cohesive set of projects that can build upon each other. Furthermore, it is also necessary to quickly prune ideas without investing too much time.

• Early involvement and better communication with product groups: One of the major problems that researchers in industrial labs face is to get buy-in from product group architects. The architects feel that the researchers do not have a good understanding of the problem area, and the researchers feel that the product architects do not have an appreciation for the novelty of the idea.

• Early dissemination of analysis/guidance information of an emerging technical trend: Nowadays, new ideas are discussed in blogs, technical conferences, customer visits, and during interactions with product architects. Most researchers spend a lot of time understanding the customer problems and technical trends, and then doing a survey of related literature, analyzing the technical trend or problem, and then proposing new project ideas. This information is very valuable for executives and other employees within a company to get a good technical understanding of an emerging area and also its impact on the company.

Briefly speaking, the blue report process consists of identifying few new themes. The themes are identified by company leaders, researchers, and product architects based on emerging technology trends, competitor moves and customer problems. The notion of themes helps to bring focus with respect to what the group should work on. A set of researchers and relevant product group architects together form a theme team for each of the themes. This helps to both empower researchers as well as get early involvement by key product architects. Each theme team concretely defines the theme and its scope, does a background survey of the work done in that area, performs an analysis on what are the key problems, and how does this theme affect the company. Finally, the theme team also proposes a prioritized set of project ideas. The output of the theme team’s work is a blue report. This report can be read by others in the company to get a better technical understanding of an emerging technical area/threat. After the generation of the blue reports the research management tries to prioritize between the different themes and then allots resources for the top priority themes. Priority is determined based on company priorities, threat level, employee skill set etc. Generating a blue report typically takes around 3 months and one can periodically update it once in six months. Finally, I called it a Blue Report instead of calling it something else because I want a non-technical catchy name. Since NetApp’s new logo is blue in color, I thought about calling this report a Blue Report.

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