NetApp Inc. is redefining the future of intelligent data with cloud-native simplicity and artificial intelligence at scale. Its key strategic differentiator is a wide berth. The company remains the only storage vendor natively embedded in Microsoft Azure (with Azure NetApp Files), Amazon Web Services Inc. (with FSx for NetApp ONTAP) and Google Cloud (with NetApp Volumes). This accessibility enables enterprises to run familiar, enterprise-grade storage seamlessly across public cloud environments.

NetApp’s Jeff Baxter discusses intelligent data infrastructure with theCUBE.

However, as shifting tech winds change enterprise buying decisions, how does NetApp plan to remain the choice storage partner moving forward?

“There are many reasons people choose to use NetApp on the cloud, but you can almost divide them into two camps,” said Jeff Baxter (pictured), vice president of product marketing at NetApp. “There are customers who know NetApp, who use NetApp on-prem, who are drawn to that and want to be able to use it across. And then, literally,y there’s the customers who are just looking for a fully-featured enterprise file storage that is highly performant on the cloud.”

Baxter spoke with theCUBE’s Rob Strechay at the “Architecting Outcomes in the Era of Intelligence” event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the NetApp blueprint for building the intelligent data infrastructure to unify cloud and AI. (* Disclosure below.)

Bringing intelligent data to AI workloads

Central to NetApp’s AI strategy is its commitment to an “intelligent data infrastructure.” Rather than shifting massive datasets to central training environments, NetApp advocates for bringing AI capabilities — such as metadata catalogs, vector databases, and microservices — directly to the storage layer, according to Baxter.

“Data is at the edge,” he said. “AI is moving toward where the data is, so definitely, we’ve had announcements in the AI space about taking our AIPod and moving it farther out into smaller enterprises, and even farther out toward the edge. The idea is that we can have these large-scale massive AIPods that can be hooked up to super pods and can also be hooked up to base pods for large language model training or more intensive and model training … then we can go all the way out and do inferencing and [retrieval-agumented generation].”

This capability aligns tightly with NetApp’s work with Nvidia Corp. on the Nvidia AI Data Platform, enabling customers to pair high-performance compute with co-located, AI-ready storage for unmatched efficiency and data fidelity, according to Baxter.

“That’s really what we’re seeing these smaller training instantiations in enterprises are starting to be,” he said. “They still will use large language models, but they’ll use them more as a service, and they’ll use things from one of the cloud providers, and then they’ll add onto and use things that aren’t retrieval augmented generation there. Otherwise, they’ll build their own small language models.”

The personas to which NetApp markets are also evolving. Where the company once focused primarily on chief information officers and storage administrators, today’s conversations increasingly include data engineers, data scientists and security leaders. Data engineers, in particular, are emerging as the DevOps-like bridge between infrastructure teams and AI practitioners, Baxter added.

“It’s not that we won’t talk to data scientists and we’ll bring our own data science team in to talk to them, but it’s really about the data engineers bridging that gap — that’s one cohort,” he said. “Almost in the other direction, we’re having far more conversations with [chief information security officers] and security teams than I think we ever were before.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the “Architecting Outcomes in the Era of Intelligence” event:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the “Architecting Outcomes in the Era of Intelligence” event. Neither NetApp Inc., the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE