NetApp’s ‘sleeping giant’ moment as AI brings new data buyers
SiliconANGLE Jonathan Anthony ● Covered by 6 sources
NetApp says AI is bringing fresh buyers to storage, not just old storage teams. That’s why it’s pitching data infrastructure as the front door to AI.
Based on reporting by SiliconANGLE, Jonathan Anthony — read the original for the full story.
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Artificial intelligence is dragging storage vendors out of the back office and into a much wider sales conversation. At NetApp, that has turned into a three-year effort to reframe the company around what it calls Intelligent Data Infrastructure, a phrase meant to function as more than marketing copy.
Gabie Boko, NetApp’s chief marketing officer, described it as an internal operating idea as much as a customer message. She said the company uses it to guide decisions on innovation, strategy, partners and customers. She made those remarks during a theCUBE broadcast from NetApp INSIGHT, alongside Christophe Bertrand and Rebecca Knight.
The pitch is landing with people who were never shopping for storage in the first place. Boko said website traffic from new names rose about 50% year over year after the company’s keynote announcements, and many of those visitors carry titles like chief data officer rather than traditional storage roles. That matters because the ask has changed: buyers want to activate data for AI, not just park it somewhere safe.
NetApp is trying to meet that demand with new architecture aimed at AI factories and neoclouds. This week it unveiled NetApp Novus, a storage architecture designed to keep large GPU environments supplied with data. Chief executive George Kurian has linked that move to production AI, and Boko stressed that NetApp is not pushing customers into a closed stack. The company wants to reach data where it already sits.
That is the heart of the argument. NetApp is betting that storage’s old reputation as plumbing is now an advantage, because AI makes data access the main event. Boko called the company a “sleeping giant,” and in a market suddenly crowded with data buyers who have bigger questions than disk capacity, that sounds less like a slogan than a sales plan.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is the rare storage pitch that doesn’t sound sleepy. AI has given old infrastructure vendors a second chance to look strategic, and NetApp is smart to stop apologizing for being the thing underneath the thing. The trick, as ever, is whether “intelligent” becomes a real product edge or just another corporate sticker for the laptop lid.
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