Whether customers are ready to purchase data management solutions stretching from the data center to the cloud depends on their workloads, Zarafshar said.

"There are some customers who are saying, 'All cloud and no looking back,'" he said. "And there are some who are saying, 'No, it's gonna have to be residing in our data center space.' It depends on the kind of data they have, the kind of requirements for security, access, backup, and all the other things coming into play."

There will not be one solution to fit every single type of customer, Zarafshar said. "There will be customers saying, 'That half is going to the data center, that half is going to the cloud," he said. "The industry has to be able to answer all their needs."

Jason Wright, managing director of All Covered, a Houston, Texas-based solution provider which partners with NetApp, told CRN at the Best of Breed conference that Kurian was right when he said that there will always be a need for on-premises storage solutions in a world that is moving to the cloud.

"Customers are trying the cloud, and finding that not everything works in the cloud," Wright said.

Wright said he is a big fan of the book "Good To Great" by Jim Collins which says it is important for a company to stay focused on what it is good at.

"George Kurian saying NetApp will stay focused on being a storage company is a great move," he said. "If it were to acquire an infrastructure company ... it could get bloated and not be as successful in storage."