Artificial intelligence has pulled data infrastructure out of the back office and into conversations with buyers who never had to think about storage before. For longtime storage providers, that shift is a rare chance to retell their story to an audience with no preconceptions.
NetApp Inc. has spent three years preparing for that moment, reframing its storage legacy around what it calls Intelligent Data Infrastructure. The idea now goes well beyond a single product or a brand campaign, serving as an internal organizing principle for the company, according to Gabie Boko (pictured), chief marketing officer of NetApp.
“Intelligent data infrastructure is not just a thing,” Boko said. “It is a mantra of how we want to make right decisions, how we think about innovation, how we drive strategic decisions forward for our customers, for our partners and for ourselves.”
Boko spoke with theCUBE Research’s Christophe Bertrand and co-host Rebecca Knight at NetApp INSIGHT, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed NetApp’s Intelligent Data Infrastructure strategy and the company’s push to activate data for AI factories. (* Disclosure below.)
Data infrastructure draws a new class of buyer
AI is accelerating several data trends at once, from jurisdictional data sovereignty to cyber resilience and hyperscaler control over compliance and workloads. That convergence is showing up in NetApp’s pipeline, with website traffic from net-new names up about 50% year over year after the company’s keynote announcements, Boko noted. Many of those visitors hold data-focused titles such as chief data officer rather than traditional storage roles.
“It’s not that storage or data infrastructure is cool again,” Boko said. “It is that they are asking the questions to say, ‘I need to activate my data.’ Who is going to be the best to do that?”
NetApp is backing that pitch with new architecture for AI factories and neoclouds. The company this week unveiled NetApp Novus, a storage architecture built to keep large GPU environments fed with data, and Chief Executive Officer George Kurian has tied it to production AI. Rather than locking customers into one stack, the NetApp platform is designed to reach data wherever it already lives, Boko explained.
“We are not suggesting that you want to be inside a walled garden,” she said. “We are suggesting we are already there. Help us activate your data.”
For newcomers, NetApp’s storage heritage is meant to read as proof of experience rather than baggage. Whatever form AI takes next, the way companies access and activate their data will remain central, and that keeps data infrastructure at the core of the conversation, according to Boko.
“I believe that NetApp is, for some people, a sleeping giant,” she added. “But we are here and we are driving the AI era. Even if AI changes tomorrow, you can absolutely guarantee that how we think about data, how we’re giving you access to it and how we are helping you activate it is going to define your future going forward.”
Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of NetApp INSIGHT:
(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for NetApp INSIGHT. Neither NetApp, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)