As NetApp Inc. celebrates a strong year and kicks off fiscal year 2026, it’s outlining a clear, confident and company-wide vision: A commitment to enabling organizations to become more data intelligent, especially as AI transforms the landscape.

NetApp’s George Kurian talks with theCUBE about AI data readiness.

With a laser focus on enterprise AI and the service providers supporting it, how does NetApp plan to sustain and build on its stated vision moving forward?

“Many of the bets that we saw many years ago around unifying your data so that you can have better insights about bringing together all of the disparate data silos as well as public cloud and on-premises have worked out in our favor,” said George Kurian (pictured), chief executive officer of NetApp. “And now we are kind of deep in the next phase of the journey where we are bringing insight into the context and the structure of data.”

Kurian spoke with theCUBE’s Rebecca Knight and 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 NetApp’s strategy for a data-driven future, anchored in humility, innovation and a powerful platform to unify AI, cloud and storage. (* Disclosure below.)

Leading the charge for data intelligent infrastructure

The key differentiator for NetApp is its ability to unify siloed data across clouds and on-prem environments while preserving access controls, privacy rules and compliance mandates. To sustain that premise, the company has outlined three key strategic pillars: A specialization in data problems, an open platform and a proven architecture —  built from the ground up to unify data across systems and clouds, according to Kurian.

“We are in a long line of innovators starting from 25,000 years ago, where people have tried to record data as a way to share their stories and the meaning of life to succeeding generations,” he said. ” We take that responsibility and obligation seriously. It requires us to act with humility, personal accountability, a sense of respect and a drive for excellence in the way we work.”

Coming soon from NetApp is the “world’s richest, disaggregated storage architecture,” according to Kurian. This architecture will not only unify access, but also enrich the meaning and structure of data, enabling smarter, automated pipelines for AI.

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