NetApp accelerates its role in the artificial intelligence ecosystem, offering unified and secure solutions that integrate its ONTAP software with the new disaggregated architecture. As we recently saw at its annual NetApp INSIGHT conference in Las Vegas, the company has presented a set of innovations developed to help organizations prepare their data for AI. These developments position the company as one of the most reliable partners to convert the hype of AI into tangible benefits for companies and public administrations in our country.
At a recent lunch with the press, Maite Ramos, general director of NetApp for Iberia, highlighted that “the company has experienced double-digit growth in the all-flash storage market which, according to IDC, has remained flat over the last year.” This growth is attributed to the gain in market share compared to the competition, highlighting the reliability and security of the storage solutions offered. Its advances in recent years have earned it the trust of demanding organizations in terms of data and information management, such as the European Space Agency or the College of Registrars of Spain (CORPME).
Generative AI has driven a shift toward inference that now requires more demanding computation than traditional inference
Ramos also points out that “Spain is very well positioned to attract AI projects in key areas and sectors such as sustainability or smart cities.” For the director, “the EU’s sovereign vision on AI, with artificial intelligence gigafactory projects, represents a huge opportunity for the advancement of complex AI projects in strategic industries, where NetApp data management platforms are among the best positioned.”
Technological innovations and challenges in AI
There are many organizations that are trying to ride the AI wave without having an adequate infrastructure to ensure the availability and optimal management of their data. According to the company, this lack of preparation will cause a high number of AI projects – between 60 and 70% – to fail to pass the proof of concept phase or to fail to generate a measurable impact on organizations’ accounts in the coming years. Large consulting firms such as Gartner and IDC attribute the failures to the poor quality of the data and its incorrect preparation, as well as the failure to use a unified platform that guarantees its governance and protection.
NetApp offers storage solutions in complex AI projects spanning infrastructure, compute, networking and data storage. In this context, the latest innovations announced by NetApp at INSIGHT consist of bringing AI to the data, and not the other way around, in order to unleash the hidden insights that reside in corporate information silos. To do this, it uses AFX disaggregated all-flash storage systems and the NetApp AI Data Engine (AIDE), developed together with Nvidia. The latter connects the entire data estate residing in hybrid and multi-cloud environments into a unified database, reducing multiple preparation and management steps. Together, both innovations unify high-performance storage and intelligent data services into a single, secure and scalable proposition to accelerate enterprise AI.
Disaggregated data infrastructure
This new architecture is compatible with ONTAP software, offering advanced functionalities such as multi-tenancy, layer-to-layer visibility and security. The company differentiates itself from its competitors by providing more complete solutions that integrate multicloud capabilities, unified storage and security.
For Jaime Balaña, technical director of NetApp for Latin America, “the new unified offer is based on three strategic pillars: the NetApp ONTAP unified storage operating system; the concept of hybrid and multicloud data fabric; and the creation of intelligent data infrastructure based on automation, optimization and security.”
NetApp has launched its new AFX product line, a disaggregated architecture designed for high-performance AI environments.
Balaña points out that the AFX system has been certified by Nvidia before even hitting the market. Furthermore, he emphasizes that “AFX is a disaggregated data infrastructure that breaks with the traditional storage architecture, allowing controllers and disks to be scaled independently. In multi-tenant environments, this type of configuration is especially interesting, adapting to the needs of large-scale AI projects. The AFX architecture can scale up to 128 nodes and offer performance greater than a terabyte per second, maintaining all the advantages of ONTAP.”
On the software side, AI Data Engine (AIDE) runs on special nodes within the storage cluster, including GPUs, to facilitate data management and preparation for AI. This data engine simplifies complex processes such as classification and analysis that have traditionally required the use of multiple tools. In addition, AIDE provides a global view of all company data, regardless of its location, without the need to move it.
Together, these capabilities unify high-performance storage and intelligent data services into a secure, scalable offering that accelerates recovery, augmented generation (RAG), and enterprise AI inference across hybrid and multicloud environments. Customers will be able to access these products through direct purchase or through a NetApp Keystone STaaS subscription. With NetApp AFX and NetApp AI Data Engine, the NetApp data platform ensures that all data is immediately AI-ready.
Within the field of security, another of the company’s novelties is the renewal of its NetApp Ransomware Resilience service, with which NetApp becomes the first provider to integrate data breach detection directly into enterprise storage.
