NetApp pitches unified storage to unlock legacy data for AI without infrastructure overhaul

As artificial intelligence transitions from experimental deployments to operational systems, many organizations are grappling with a fundamental challenge: how to unlock decades of accumulated data for AI use without dismantling and reconstructing their underlying storage systems. NetApp Inc. believes it has a solution that extends far beyond its traditional storage business.

The company's strategy centers on a core principle articulated by Jen Prenner, senior vice president of product marketing at NetApp: enterprises should be able to prepare their data for AI without relocating it or fundamentally altering its structure. Speaking at NetApp INSIGHT, Prenner told theCUBE Research's Christophe Bertrand and Rebecca Knight that "For data to be usable for AI, it needs to be accessible, governed, protected, available. You need to be able to do that with all that data for your projects without re-architecting the data or moving it."

Unified storage across multiple environments

Addressing the technical requirements for AI-ready data demands support for diverse storage architectures. NetApp's approach integrates file, block and object storage into a single framework, according to Prenner. The company also announced plans to introduce a fully managed storage service running on Oracle Corp.'s cloud infrastructure, with availability expected within 12 months.

Prenner emphasized that this unified strategy accommodates the hybrid and multi-cloud deployments that characterize most enterprise environments. "Whether you want to store your data on the cloud, at the edge, or on-prem, or some combination of all three, which is what most customers do, we feel like allowing a unified strategy to take hold is how you access all of that data without creating that complexity, without creating more silos," she explained.

Built-in protection and consolidated management

Data protection must be woven into every component of the infrastructure rather than added as an afterthought, Prenner argued. NetApp combines its proprietary data protection capabilities with an expanded partnership with Commvault Systems Inc. The company's Console control plane also enables on-premises deployment for organizations operating in air-gapped environments that cannot connect to cloud services.

Consolidating management functions into a single platform reduces operational overhead and eliminates the need for fragmented tooling across teams. "Your fleet manageability, your observability, reporting, analytics, remediation — all of that can be done with Console within one tool," Prenner said. "So you don't have to have separate teams, separate tools, which end up costing a lot of money."

Storage as foundation for broader capabilities

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While storage infrastructure remains the bedrock of NetApp's offering, the company is layering protection mechanisms, control planes and data services on top to enable enterprises to operationalize their AI initiatives. According to Prenner, "What we want folks to understand is that NetApp is far more than your storage provider. We have 30 years of trust with our customers, but we also have a lot more so that customers can take their AI ambitions and turn them into something that's real."