NetApp aims to make legacy data AI-ready without a rebuild
SiliconANGLE Sloane Kali Faye ● Covered by 3 sources
NetApp says it can make old enterprise data ready for AI without moving or rebuilding it. That could spare companies from another messy storage overhaul as AI goes mainstream.
Based on reporting by SiliconANGLE, Sloane Kali Faye — read the original for the full story.
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NetApp is pushing a familiar pitch with a wider reach than old-school storage: keep the data where it already sits and make it usable for AI there. At NetApp INSIGHT, senior vice president of product marketing Jen Prenner said the company’s goal is to make data “accessible, governed, protected, available” without forcing customers to re-architect or move it.
That matters because a lot of enterprises are sitting on years of information spread across different systems. NetApp is trying to cover that sprawl with a unified approach that spans file, block and object storage. It also said it plans to offer a fully managed storage service on Oracle’s cloud infrastructure within the next 12 months.
The company’s answer to modern AI projects is not a shiny new silo. Instead, Prenner described a setup that works across cloud, edge and on-prem environments, or all three at once, which is how many customers already operate. The idea is to reduce the mess that comes from adding yet another place where data has to be copied, governed and secured.
Protection is part of the sales pitch too. NetApp pairs its own data protection tools with an expanded partnership with Commvault, while its Console control plane can be deployed locally for disconnected environments. Prenner said Console can handle fleet management, observability, reporting, analytics and remediation in one tool, so teams do not have to stitch together separate systems.
NetApp still wants storage to be seen as the base layer, but not the whole story. The company is leaning on its long customer relationships and the promise that those old repositories do not need a full rebuild before they can feed AI projects. That is a neat message, and also a very NetApp one: sell the shovel, then explain why the ground matters.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
NetApp is reading the room correctly. Most companies do not want an AI reinvention project; they want their existing mess to become useful without turning the data team into a renovation crew. The bigger trend here is boring on purpose: the winners in enterprise AI may be the ones that make old systems less embarrassing, not the ones that promise a fresh start.
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