NetApp Insight 2024 live: All the news and announcements as they happen

One way in which NetApp is helping transform the data layer for many businesses,  Vitaldevara, is by bringing structure to the unstructured data where the real insights can be found.

NetApp are building a unified global metadata namespace, Vitaldevara states, which will provide businesses with an easily synthesized, single unified global view of the data. This basically means overlaying structure over the top of unstructured data sets.

Vitaldevara dives into an example in BlueXP NetApp's hybrid multi-cloud control plane, which has been prepopulated with various untapped data sources, showing how this solution brings new functionality for users.  

We are now welcomed by Krish Vitaldevara, SVP and GM of platform at NetApp. Who wants to talk about making this vision real. To underscore this goal, Vitaldevara is helpfully wearing a T-shirt with 'bring AI to your data' printed on it.

Vitaldevara reiterates that the mission is to help customers get full value from their enterprise data, and this includes innovations across their technology stack.

Vitaldevara breaks a businesses tech stack, as it relates to implementing AI down into its infrastructure layer, with AI infrastructure that scales economically.

It also includes transforming the data layer in enterprises around the world, providing an integrated data engine that can make their data AI ready.

These solutions should also be inherently hybrid, multi-cloud, and ecosystem integrated, Vitaldevara states, a claim Kurian made at last years Insight 2023 conference.

Kurian explains that first amoung these hurdles is, the AI challenge, and these data challenges associated with AI comprise how enterprises select and unify data to build their business applications. It also covers how businesses govern this data in a responsible and ethical way. 

Finally, businesses need to be able to ensure that their data is fresh and accurate, as the outputs AI models can generate are only as good as the data they are being fed.

Kurian adds that AI is a complicated and costly endeavor for any business, but today NetApp is reiterating its commitment to building an intelligent data infrastructure that builds a bridge between AI systems and data systems, and can manage that data the way it is supposed to be managed so that it can be leveraged for insights. 

Ultimately what this means is bringing AI to your data, Kurian emphasises, and not the other way around, and doing so with solutions that are intelligent, agile, attainable, and secure.

This brings Kurian to three transformative data innovations NetApp has its sights on at Insight 2024:

- helping businesses understand and manage data for AI

- bringing AI to their enterprise data

- delivering the power of AI efficiently and securely.

One positive outcome from this transformation, Berry states, is that NetApp was able to reduce redundant data duplication by 65%.

"This really helps with having a single source of the truth across the entire enterprise and peraps most important, we are more agile and can innovate with new technologies like AI much more quickly." 

That's it from Berry and Kurian is back on stage to talk about some of the challenges around getting the most out of AI.

Now we have a  video message from Mike Berry, chief financial officer at NetApp who is talking about how NetApp underwent their own digital transformation driven by leveraging their enterprise data.

Berry explains that NetApp was operating as three different silos in terms of data reporting, its storage business, the cloud arm, and its Keystone storage as a service business. 

"This greatly impacted our operational efficiencies in a few ways. Number one our unmanaged data stores meant people were getting different answeres to the same questions."

Second, Berry explains that individual analysis of the data meant it couldn't scale insights to the entire enterprise. Finally NetApps legacy platforms couldn't process the increasing size of its data fast enough to support AI workloads. 

"Today we have one data source that informs the entire business" he boasts.

Bablani talks a little more about what he is excited about regarding AI in the coming years, he mentions Microsoft Copilot AI, no surprises there.

That's it from Bablani and now we are hearing from Kurian about the risks associated with AI. Kurian notes that of course any powerful tool like AI has inherent dangers to society. 

He explains that aggregating data to provide insight will naturally lead to concerns around bias. Kurian touches on the some of the mathematical techniques that underpin the foundations of AI, regression and clustering were devloepd by French polymath Francis Galton, who also happened to be the founder of eugenics, which is certainly an interesting observation.

Next up we get a brief message from Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, and then to celebrate the five-year anniversary of the general availability of Azure NetApp Files we are introduced to Girish Bablani, president of Microsoft Azure, who joins Kurian on stage.

Bablani offers an example of one of Microsoft and NetApp's customers, Coca Cola Bottlers of Japan. 

Coca Cola Bottlers of Japan has one of the largest SAP DV2 workloads in thew world, Bablani explains, but with the help of Azure NetApp Files they were able to migrate this vast workload in five months without experiencing any operational downtime.

The firm was also able to achieve a 30% improvement in their TCO, a 49% improvement in their application performance, as well as a 90% improvement in their deployment time.

Kurian adds that we need to recognize that the industry is at the juncture of two profound opportunities. First of these is the enormous growth in datasets, as well as the rapidly developing sophistication of the tools to analyze these datasets and produce insights. 

Kurian says we are in the third stage of the modern data revolution. The first of these stages was the basic digitization of analogue information. The second stage took place two decades ago, according to Kurian, when humans started developing a longitudinal history of a particular type of data to do basic trending and analysis.

Now, in the third stage of the modern era of data collection we need to go wider in the scope of data, as well as long in terms of detecting trends, Kurian states, and to do this businesses need to understand all of the data in their organization so they can get the best results.

Kurian says we are now in era of data and intelligence, which is handy considering NetApp are branding itself as the intelligent data infrastructure company. 

He adds that many things have changed since last year, stating that we've seen a real breakthrough in AI, where AI systems can now understand the domains in which they operate, without the assistance of humans.

"These systems enable us to build rich immersive experiences, combining multimodal technologies to understand all the data that resides in your enterprise."

Kurian harks back to last year's Insight 2023 conference where he claimed there will be data leaders and data leaders in this AI era.

He outlined the three keys to success in leveraging AI to produce new value for enterprises around the world. 

These three pillars are:

Data leaders need a cohesive data strategy, they need to treat data as a product in itself, and understand the foundations of a modern data architecture to leverage the inherent value in data.

Ok! Here we go, the lights are dimmed and the obligatory showreel is running with some extravagant shots of cars speeding down roads and astronauts floating in space.

George Kurian has stepped onto the stage to rapturous applause. He thanks the delegates for attending.

We're almost at capacity in the headliner stage, and our emcee Mario Armstrong announces we will be hearing from George Kurian imminently.

But not before he stages a giveaway for VIP passes to tomorrow's entertainment Royal Machines at sardonically-named Area 15.

Our emcee is now interviewing Nick Howell, global cloud field CTO at NetApp, who is currently explaining why he doesn't like former Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. 

Just minutes to go before we get started here in Las Vegas.

It's getting busy now as attendees flood into the auditorium. An emcee for proceedings is currently interviewing one delegate, who has just declared his love for 80s music.

We are now playing a guess the song game, and he guessed White Wedding by Billy Idol in a matter of seconds. Too easy!

Here is a shot of DJ Graffiti who is making good use of the mic to get the crowd going.

On entering the headliner stage the crowd is greeted with the dulcet tones of Pitbull. The DJ welcomes attendees from near and far, which is rather apt as 'Mr Worlwide' pumps out of the speakers.

The crowd is growing in the conference, as the excitement builds before George Kurian's opening address.

As the sign says, things are heating up here in Las Vegas with less than one hour to go before the opening keynote of NetApp Inspire 2024.

While we wait for the main event to get started here’s some more pictures from around the convention center here in Las Vegas. 

NetApp’s N-Powered branding is splashed all over the MGM Grand, representing the company’s promise to customers that it can modernize their data tooling and help them build intelligent data infrastructures.

We’ve still got roughly two hours to go before today’s keynote is set to get started at roughly 4pm (PT). While we’re waiting for everything to kick off, why catch up on some of our coverage from the conference so far exploring what could be coming up over the next three days and the years ahead?

● NetApp could corner AI infrastructure at Insight 2024 – but customer hype will ride on its messaging

At Insight 2023, NetApp was laser-focused on positioning itself as the go-to data storage and management provider for businesses looking to accelerate their AI adoption. On the back of strong performance from itself and competitors over the last year, this year it will look to carry this moment into Insight 2024, and so its messaging around why it stands out in areas like AI-ready storage as well as both hybrid and multi-cloud, will be key.

In the main foyer area of the conference center dance music pumps out from a Google Cloud-branded DJ booth.

Notably, Google Cloud is headed up by NetApp CEO George Kurian's twin brother Thomas, who appeared at Insight 2023 and could make another appearance this year. We'll have to wait and see... 

We're here on the ground at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, ready to keep you updated on all the latest news and announcements. 

Things are already underway with delegates circulating the conference center, jumping between partner sessions in the lead up to the opening keynote. 

The central theme of today’s opening keynote, however, will be largely focused on CEO George Kurian setting out his broader strategy for the company as an intelligent data infrastructure provider, a motif he established at last year’s conference.

This concept encapsulates NetApp’s ambition to transition from being understood as a traditional storage company to a partner in helping customers modernize their data infrastructure from the hardware layer to their data engine, ready to leverage AI to deliver new value.

Product innovations, technology roadmaps, customer stories, and other exciting news will follow in the next two days, whilst today’s presentation is dedicated to outlining the current business and technology landscape, and where NetApp sees opportunities for further growth.

Over the course over the next few days we can expect to hear about the firm's latest products and recent partnerships, as well as the outlook for the year ahead. AI has been in the spotlight at most tech conferences this side of 2022, so don’t be surprised if NetApp puts heavy focus on where it fits into the ongoing AI explosion. 

This means we’ll be learning about the firm’s latest moves in hybrid cloud, public cloud, CloudOps, data services, updates to its unified storage portfolio, and innovations in the block storage space, including new security features implemented across their product ecosystem.