AI is only as good as the data that fuels it, and for intelligent data infrastructure company NetApp Inc., this new era calls for a unified data approach.

“Now more than ever, companies, businesses are feeling this pressure to accelerate innovation and improve employee productivity, unlock new customer experiences,” said theCUBE host Rebecca Knight.

For NetApp, intelligent data infrastructure and unified data storage play an important role in empowering companies to do what they’re under pressure to do. What comes next for NetApp’s ecosystem was a central focus during last week’s NetApp Unveils Unified Data Storage Built for the AI Era event.

Analysts for theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, spoke with industry professionals during the event. They explored how NetApp has sought to make it easier for organizations to leverage their data for gen AI and other hybrid cloud workloads. (* Disclosure below.)

Here are three key insights you may have missed from the NetApp Unveils Unified Data Storage Built for the AI Era event:

1. NetApp aims to use intelligent data infrastructure to drive success.

When it comes to unlocking employee productivity, engaging customer experiences and accelerating the pace of customer success, data is the secret, according to George Kurian (pictured), chief executive officer of NetApp. Data is already driving competitive advantage for data-driven corporations, as opposed to those who can’t.

“One of the keys to being able to harness and unify your data for competitive advantage is an intelligent data infrastructure,” Kurian told theCUBE during the event. “It enables the two parallel requirements for business success: transformational flexibility to be able to use any data with any application anywhere while being able to have simplicity to drive efficiency and cost and resilience and security, and to take advantage of your existing skills.”

NetApp’s vision for intelligent data infrastructure and AI integration strategies involves a combination of three capabilities, according to Kurian. One is unified data storage, which is the foundation of the company’s platform.

NetApp CEO George Kurian talks with theCUBE about NetApp’s future strategies and intelligent data infrastructure.

“You can essentially unify any data across any application type and be able to integrate that into anywhere the data might live, the edge, the cloud, different types of your data center environments,” Kurian said.

The second is to integrate a set of intelligent data services, especially when it comes to dealing with the new threat landscape, according to Kurian. Third is operational capabilities to enhance team productivity while optimizing and improving sustainability.

“We’re really excited at what the offerings are and our messages; [we’re] hearing resonance in customers, which has driven our competitive advantage over the last year and our momentum adding into the new year,” he said.

All told, the event was a showcase of product announcements, enhancements and refinements. It was a look at NetApp as it rolled out its strategic priorities and initiatives, according to theCUBE Research principal analyst Rob Strechay.

“I think this has always been a really great culture that NetApp has always had and it’s carried forward,” he said. “I think part of that is the people at NetApp and the partners, and that’s what we’re surrounded by today.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with George Kurian:

2. NetApp is responding to today’s data management landscape.

With the data management landscape rapidly evolving, NetApp pointed to its intelligent infrastructure as being part of the road ahead. Last week’s event was also an opportunity to learn how NetApp’s new features and enhancements might align with what public sector customers are looking for.

When one looks at NetApp’s public sector customers, they’re not drastically different from a lot of commercial customers, according to Michelle Rudnicki, president of U.S. Public Sector at NetApp. The federal government was one of NetApp’s first customers. There were a number of features that they loved. Of course, data has changed over the ages, as has access.

Michelle Rudnicki, president of U.S. Public Sector at NetApp, talks with theCUBE about the future of data management.

“It’s become more complicated, but NetApp’s been on the front of innovation, adding in hybrid cloud and multi-protocol,” she said. “If you look at our announcements today, it’s really taking us into this new age of the intelligent data infrastructure. So, with that, the announcements are really exciting because it’s just a build on everything.”

During the event, NetApp Inc. introduced new hardware designed to run demanding generative AI workloads in on-premises data centers. The NetApp AFF A-Series systems are all-flash hardware intended to support acceleration of advanced workloads while optimizing storage costs.

“The major part of our announcement was that next major advance to unified data storage,” said Sandeep Singh, senior vice president and general manager of enterprise storage at NetApp, in a conversation with theCUBE during the event. “What we mean by that is basically a single storage OS ONTAP that can underpin any application, data workload, any data type whether its structured or unstructured, across on-prem and cloud. It’s unified data storage built for the AI era.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Michelle Rudnicki:

3. There is a critical ecosystem for responsible data use.

NetApp has always been partner-first, according to Strechay. The company leaned into that during the event, including when it came to the AI Pod initiative by NetApp, Nvidia Corp. and Lenovo Group Ltd., which integrates advanced Nvidia GPUs, Lenovo’s management stack and NetApp’s storage solutions.

“It becomes critically important for [enterprises] to take the data and combine it with the pre-trained LLMs,” Singh said. “This is just that opportunity of providing an AI Pod that packages the best of breed across Nvidia, Lenovo and NetApp and provides that in a pre-validated, pre-integrated form factor to customers so that they can effectively just do gen AI.”

Where companies have tons of data, they want to get a business outcome out of that data, according to Kamran Amini, vice president and general manager of the Server, Storage and Software-Defined Infrastructure Business Units at Lenovo. That’s where AI comes into play, he noted.

NetApp, Lenovo and Nvidia representatives discuss the AI Pod initiative with theCUBE.

“I think the partnership between the three of us here is about how do we make it easy for them and be able to get outcome-driven value with the solution we could deliver,” he said.

NetApp’s culture is focused on being partner-centric, according to Jenni Flinders, senior vice president of the worldwide partner organization at NetApp. That’s where the company’s Partner Sphere program comes into play, which aims to offer comprehensive services and support to partners looking to differentiate themselves.

“[Partners can] take our amazing product portfolio, wrapped around with the services and all other offerings that we have, to bring to market solutions that can help them deliver customer outcomes and to help them be successful as well,” Flinders said. “The partner program allows us to really interact with our partners based on their business models and how they want to interact with NetApp — so it’s been a beautiful program.”

Approximately 86% of NetApp’s business is conducted through its partners, according to Flinders. Those partnerships also stretch across business models.

“Nvidia [is a] strategic partner for us. Lenovo [is a] strategic partner for us. We have so many that are co-engineering with us, co-solutioning and co-selling. Together, we just bring beautiful stuff to the market for our customers,” she said.

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Sandeep Singh, Kamran Amini and Bob Pette, vice president and general manager of enterprise platforms at Nvidia:

To watch more of theCUBE’s coverage of the NetApp Unveils Unified Data Storage Built for the AI Era event, here’s our complete event video playlist:

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

Photo: SiliconANGLE