Intelligent data infrastructure is the new ruleset, employing artificial intelligence to turn stadiums across the world into resilient data centers that are always at peak performance. 

NetApp’s César Cernuda and the NFL’s Aaron Amendolia talk with theCUBE about how their partnership has revolved around building an intelligent data infrastructure.

Of course, the demands are staggering. For the National Football League, that translates to terabytes of video each week, sensors on every player and a media ecosystem that stretches from the field to the cloud.  The system has to be fast, portable and secure – which requires disciplined data readiness, according to César Cernuda (pictured, left), president of NetApp Inc.

“Data is one of the most strategic assets that the NFL has,” Cernuda said. “Many of the AI projects today fail because you have not really prepared your data for AI. I think why we’ve been working with the NFL is [to make] sure that the data is prepared – that we really have a strategy and a differentiation there.”

César and Aaron Amendolia (right), deputy chief information officer of the NFL, spoke with theCUBE’s Christophe Bertrand at the NetApp Insight 2025 event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how the NFL-NetApp partnership has facilitated an intelligent data infrastructure. (* Disclosure below.) 

Why intelligent data infrastructure matters for the NFL

NetApp – a longtime NFL partner – balances short and long games when it comes to data management. The scale of operations requires low-latency performance in the moment and deep, searchable archives thereafter. These goals are made especially difficult considering the significant volume of content produced, according to Amendolia.

“We have a ring of 32 cameras, six of them 8K, the remaining in 4K plus the broadcast coming in,” he said. “That’s 1.4 terabytes of video data per game. You multiply that times a season. We’re looking at about half a petabyte of just video data coming on.”

NetApp’s partnerships with key hyperscalers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud make the architecture consistent across on-premises and cloud while keeping governance, security and costs in check, according to Cernuda. Underpinning the company’s work with hyperscalers and collaboration with the NFL is the belief that AI should be brought to data, rather than hauling data to new tools.

“We proudly said we want to bring AI into your data, not [the] other way around,” he said. “The reason we’re saying that is we understand that you have all these investments done. I want to make sure that we prepare the technology to bring AI into the investments you have done with data.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the NetApp Insight 2025 event:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the NetApp Insight event. Neither NetApp, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE