NetApp: ‘Everyone Talks About AI, but Without Data it Wouldn’t Exist’

This week the NetApp Insight Xtra event was held in Madrid, where the manufacturer reviewed the latest technological news and explained the features of its solutions, with the focus on the new products and channel strategy announced a few months ago in the United States.

It is clear to everyone that we are in the era of data and intelligence, at a time when we have to trust in products but also in people.

As José Manuel Petisco, VP for EEMI at NetApp, said, ‘it is necessary to bring artificial intelligence to data and not the other way around, as well as to be more resilient through more secure information management’. In this regard, the executive recalled that, although the focus is currently on AI, ‘NetApp has been implementing it for many years’.

Indeed, the relationship between generative AI and data management is vital to the success of developments: ‘Up to 20% of GenAI projects fail if there is no data architecture to match,’ added Petisco.

As usual, the meeting was attended by the company’s senior management, but on this occasion we were treated to a keynote speech by César Cernuda, NetApp’s worldwide president.

Intelligent Data Infrastructure

His need focused on the relationship between artificial intelligence and data: ‘Everyone talks about AI, but without data it wouldn’t exist. Companies have to differentiate themselves from their competitors, a differentiation that can be achieved through the data they handle. It is therefore vital to build a consistent, modern-day data strategy through ‘an intelligent data infrastructure, which is nothing more than unified data storage with intelligent solutions and services’.

The global head of NetApp stressed the importance of bringing artificial intelligence to data and not the other way around. Among other things to maintain the privacy and governance of the information that organisations handle: ‘that is an intelligent data infrastructure’.

On the other hand, it is necessary to respond to the hybrid world in which we find ourselves, where data and workloads can be in the public cloud, in the private cloud or on-premise, so the data architecture must be able to manage all this information in a unified way: ‘that is what we wanted with ONTAP, to use the same technology to be able to interoperate between the different worlds,’ added Cernuda.

The executive continued with some characteristics and interaction mechanisms that must occur in order not to fail in modern projects: you have to take into account the growth in scale and scope of data, as well as using mathematical tools and that there is human interest in taking advantage of opportunities. And AI is an opportunity.

Indeed, when applied correctly, artificial intelligence can improve automation and efficiency by 50%, as well as the analysis of data and the knowledge that can be obtained from it by 60%. Another key aspect highlighted by the executive is the increase in productivity at work thanks to AI.

Referring to the Spanish market, Cernuda admitted that ‘it is not a leading country in the use of AI because it is mainly made up of SMEs, something that has become a challenge’.

But challenges always translate into opportunities and in this case there is huge potential for adoption. According to data provided by NetApp, the number of companies starting to develop AI projects has increased by 59%, while 26% are increasing their spending on AI infrastructure.

The truth is that organisations are realising the importance of their data: ‘it is their most critical asset,’ said Cernuda. In a few years’ time, by 2030, we are expected to surpass the 1 Yottabyte (YB) data barrier, a figure that until recently was more a theoretical than a practical question due to its magnitude, but which we are close to reaching. Meanwhile, businesses currently use only 30% of the data they generate, a percentage that can be significantly increased with AI to make them more efficient.

That’s exactly what NetApp’s intelligent data infrastructure enables, he says: ‘When designing a data infrastructure, you have to think about what we have in the future, not what we have now. It has to be ready to scale and move information from one place to another easily depending on the needs of the moment,’ he concluded.

What’s new in NetApp Insight

As is now traditional, the manufacturer has brought together during this meeting with partners and customers all the new features presented at the NetApp Insight world congress, which we already reported on at the time in Silicon.

Jaime Balañá, NetApp’s technical director for Latin America, together with his team, gave details of the advances in hardware and software, with the All-Flash cabinets as the main reference. This is one of the fastest growing areas of the manufacturer’s business, as is the case of the AFF A-Series, which now offer performance improvements of between 30% and 40% compared to their predecessors. They are suitable for high-performance and responsive workloads such as artificial intelligence-related processes.

The new AFF C-Series arrays have also been upgraded, with increased Flash capacity to modernise and consolidate general-purpose loads.

The new FAS70 and FAS90 systems have been upgraded to accommodate cold data and lower value storage such as backups.

Another new feature presented is related to block storage, which is already used by 60% of NetApp customers. This is the ASA A series, which offers more simplicity, power and accessibility in Flash drives. The main new feature of this series is that management is simplified as it is optimised for blocks: you don’t have to manage so many parameters but provision the key elements of the blocks.

And all this with the common denominator of its operating system, the manufacturer’s big star: NetApp ONTAP, now available in version 9.16. ‘Whoever knows ONTAP is capable of managing any NetApp storage instance,’ said Balañá.

Cybersecurity is also playing an important role in the company’s offering. NetApp has NetApp Ransomware Protection, one of the most advanced solutions for preventing this type of attack, which is fully integrated into the storage solutions. Proof of its capabilities is the new AI powered NetApp ONTAP Autonomous Ransomware Protection, a software designed with artificial intelligence algorithms that monitors activity to detect attacks before they occur and react in real time with Snapshots to prevent the encryption and hijacking of corporate information. According to the company, it is capable of 99% threat detection accuracy.

Real-world use cases

Also during NetApp Insight Xtra, a roundtable discussion was held with several organisations that have deployed NetApp solutions. Leaders from the Cybersecurity Agency of the Community of Madrid, CESTIC (part of the Ministry of Defence), the Association of Registrars and the Zaragoza Accident Insurance Company explained the challenges they face and how they have defined their storage strategies to improve the efficiency of their services, extract value from the data they manage and increase their security. A round table moderated by our colleague Daniel de Blas, head of Branded Content at NetMedia International, which served as an example of how NetApp technology can respond to the real needs of organisations in the era of data and intelligence.

To round up, Maite Ramos, general manager of NetApp Iberia, emphasised that ‘intelligent data management is the key to and the driving force behind the success of organisations. In Spain we have created a very efficient ecosystem and, above all, one that is highly committed to the challenges facing organisations today.‘