As the demand for more efficient, secure and flexible infrastructure grows, organizations are increasingly turning to intelligent data solutions that simplify multicloud and hybrid environments. Highlighting these trends, NetApp Insight 2024 showcased innovations that unify systems into a single platform to meet diverse operational needs.

NetApp’s Cesar Cernuda talks with theCUBE about the role of unified storage solutions in driving innovation and efficiency for businesses.

“There’s plenty of data that lives on NetApp, and we have a big responsibility toward our customers,” Cesar Cernuda (pictured), president of NetApp Inc., told theCUBE during a live interview at this year’s Insight conference. “Our vision of intelligent data infrastructure was not just a response of those customer needs, but a reality of what’s happening in the world. In a way, what our customers are asking us for is to have a unified storage plan where they can embrace public cloud, multicloud [and] the world of on-premises with a single engine, and, [in] our case, what we’re bringing is [a] single operating system.”

During the event, theCUBE Research’s Rob Strechay, co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, and Rebecca Knight, spoke with a variety of data leaders. Discussions centered on new products, key trends and what’s next in data infrastructure innovations. (* Disclosure below.)

Here are three key highlights you may have missed from theCUBE’s coverage of the NetApp Insight 2024 event:

1. NetApp focused on an ecosystem of cloud partnerships, intelligent data solutions and security.

As hybrid cloud environments grow more complex, businesses focus on optimizing data infrastructure to improve visibility, efficiency and security, Haiyan Song, executive vice president of intelligent services at NetApp, told theCUBE during the event. Integrating intelligent data solutions that incorporate multicloud solutions enhances ransomware protection and streamlines infrastructure management, driving organizations toward more resilient and scalable infrastructures that maximize data value.

“The intelligence services play a key role to bring intelligence to the operations of the infrastructure, a key role to get the best value out of the data,” Song said. “We’re bringing a slew of solution[s] together … or data infrastructure insight for telemetry or a Spot Eco for reservation management and really teaming up to help customers on that journey,” she said.

NetApp’s innovations in hybrid cloud management reflect the growing demand for data infrastructure that adapts to dynamic workloads, according to Song. NetApp helps businesses optimize deployments with intelligent data solutions aimed at comprehensive visibility into infrastructure, costs and workloads, focusing on observability. This adaptability is intended to fine-tune enterprise systems to meet modern demands without sacrificing performance or security.

NetApp’s Haiyan Song talks with theCUBE about the growing focus on optimizing hybrid cloud management.

“In order to optimize, you’ve got to [have that] observability — whether it’s for the infrastructure, for the cost of the infrastructure [or] for the nature of the workload — and [then] come with open source as well,” Song said. “We really try to add our infrastructure and workload services portfolio to bring that visibility — that intelligence — so we can optimize the right infrastructure adapted for the workloads because nothing is static.”

NetApp’s strategic partnerships with hyperscalers also play a critical role in enhancing enterprise storage, Pravjit Tiwana, senior vice president and general manager of the Cloud Storage Business Unit at NetApp, told theCUBE during the event. Combining NetApp’s ONTAP technology with the capabilities of hyperscalers provides global availability, high security standards and seamless access to powerful tools, such as Amazon Bedrock and Google’s artificial intelligence services.

“We are together raising the bar on security, getting the best from the hyperscaler side of the things [and the] best from the ONTAP side,” Tiwana said. “The same thing goes around compliances.”

To extend these capabilities, organizations are looking for ways to simplify their data infrastructure while embracing innovation. Businesses can only truly unlock the power of AI and data intelligence when they have a unified, reliable infrastructure, Adam Thier, chief product and technology officer of Anaplan Inc., told theCUBE during the event.

“Now we’re in the process of having a single view globally of all our storage,” he said. “It facilitates disaster recovery. It facilitates our customer movement. And then the big one coming up that we’re really focused on is ransomware.”

Here’s the complete video interview with Cernuda and Thier, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of NetApp Insight:

2. NetApp’s All-Flash storage area network and intelligent data solutions simplify IT infrastructure.

NetApp’s all-flash SAN array, supported by intelligent data solutions, simplifies IT infrastructure while providing scalability to meet the demands of growing businesses, Sandeep Singh, senior vice president and general manager of enterprise storage at NetApp, told theCUBE during the event. Built for mission-critical workloads, such as VMware and database applications, the ASA A-Series combines scale-out clustering with six nines data availability and advanced data management. This infrastructure aims to reduce complexity while maintaining performance and cost-effectiveness for a wide range of businesses.

“The new ASA A-Series is designed to be super simple so that anyone can manage it, and it has that simplicity within the system built into it as well as simplicity at scale,” Singh said. “We feel that the new ASA A-Series is going to help customers with every budget be able to go and modernize their block workloads.”

The ONTAP system further enhances the ASA platform by integrating advanced data management, according to Singh. This integration unifies diverse workloads such as AI analytics, cloud storage and database environments. Customers benefit from seamless data management, reducing infrastructure silos while supporting varied applications across different environments.

“The beauty is the ASA is built with ONTAP, and ONTAP brings all of the mature capabilities of the high-end, scale-out clustering and all of the advanced data management,” Singh said. “There are systems out there, super simple, but they don’t provide that scale-out clustering.”

NetApp’s Michelle Rudnicki talks with theCUBE about how NetApp helps the public sector deploy an intelligent data infrastructure at NetApp Insight.

In the public sector, NetApp helps federal agencies modernize IT systems by offering intelligent data infrastructure solutions that enable better decision-making and enhanced cybersecurity with zero-trust architectures, Michelle Rudnicki, president of the U.S. public sector at NetApp, told theCUBE during the event. The company allows federal entities to operate seamlessly across cloud and on-premises environments while ensuring security remains a top priority.

“NetApp’s been a trusted partner of the federal government for over 30 years, and some of the reasons that they’ve trusted us is [that] we always have kept security in the forefront,” said Rudnicki. “Where NetApp has been able to help them is to really cross those silos and bring intelligent data infrastructure that they can take advantage of, whether they’re in the cloud or they’re working on-prem.”

Cost management is another strength of NetApp’s solutions, particularly for federal agencies, according to Rudnicki. With the Keystone consumption-based model, NetApp helps these agencies reduce expenses, offering significant savings, such as a $1 million reduction for one customer after implementing more efficient solutions.

“The other area that we see is in [the] use of consumption-based offerings; our Keystone offering is really getting traction with our federal customers,” Rudnicki said. She added that NetApp also simplifies operations through unified storage, allowing federal agencies to manage files, blocks and objects with the same tools across on-prem and cloud environments.

Here’s the complete video interview with Singh, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of the NetApp Insight 2024 event:

3. Johnson & Johnson’s collaboration with NetApp is driving innovations in global data management.

AI Centers of Excellence are crucial in scaling Johnson & Johnson’s AI-driven initiatives and ensuring governance and innovation across their global operations, Monica Jain, director of R&D data science at Johnson & Johnson Innovation Medicine, told theCUBE during the event. These centers streamline AI model training and optimize data management, ensuring AI projects comply with regional regulations and ethical standards. Johnson & Johnson’s collaboration with NetApp has enabled the company to enhance its healthcare innovations by integrating intelligent data solutions with scalable AI and secure data management.

J&J’s Monica Jain and NetApp’s Hoseb Dermanilian talk with theCUBE about the collaboration between the two companies.

“It is when we are working on the data management as a whole [that] data governance is an essential piece of it,” Jain said. “We have a separate committee like ethics and compliance to take care of the data, as well. I think it’s a very important piece here to take care of what we are doing with our data.”

As AI adoption increases, Johnson & Johnson’s focus on robust data infrastructure has become critical in managing vast amounts of data while ensuring compliance. The company’s AI Center of Excellence emphasizes scalable solutions, using both large and small language models to solve complex healthcare challenges, according to Jain. This approach ensures that AI projects are agile and able to adapt to evolving healthcare and pharmaceutical research demands.

“All those LLMs actually are breaking down into small language models, which are combining and solving the problem,” Jain said. “One LLM cannot solve the complexity we have, especially in the R&D space. So, we are breaking them into pieces to solve small problems, combining them together, and then we are solving the problem.”

As Johnson & Johnson continues to address complex research problems with LLMs, ensuring seamless data accessibility across both legacy and cloud systems also remains a top priority. This holistic approach to data integration is crucial for eliminating silos and improving the speed at which data scientists can access and utilize information.

“Data mobility shouldn’t be an issue,” Jain said. “It should be very flexible to have those data accessible to our data scientists, as well.”

Here’s the complete video interview with Jain, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of the NetApp Insight 2024 event:

To watch more of theCUBE’s coverage of the NetApp Insight 2024 event, here’s our complete event video playlist:

(* Disclosure: NetApp sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither NetApp nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE