AI And Data: The Key To Partner Success With NetApp

AI is no longer a future concept—it’s here, and businesses are racing to unlock its full potential. But without the right data strategy, progress can stall. That’s where NetApp comes in, helping partners build AI solutions that deliver real business outcomes.

CRNtv host Sydney Neely speaks with Mike Hommer, partner field CTO at NetApp, about how partners can accelerate AI adoption and drive profitability with smarter, more secure data strategies.

Sydney: AI is more than a buzzword—it’s driving major shifts in how businesses operate. With partners at different levels of AI adoption, how does NetApp provide the right solutions to help them navigate customer needs?

Mike: It’s by providing a product portfolio that doesn’t just address one aspect of AI. We give partners options to help customers wherever they are in the ideation process—whether they’re just trying things out in the cloud or working with large, high-performance systems when they need to do modeling in their own data centers. And even once they’ve created that inferencing instance, being able to run it at the edge and seamlessly transition updates, improvements, anomalies and everything else they need in an AI workflow from end to end.

Sydney: AI is a huge opportunity, but partners need real ROI. How does NetApp help them monetize AI and drive business growth?

Mike: The end goal of any AI project is to make a substantive improvement to the business, and that requires a real understanding of the data that you’re using.

The better the data you put in, the better the result you’re going to get out of your model. But you also need to make sure that you protect that asset and the important things you’re accomplishing with the AI you’re building. Having an intelligent, secure data infrastructure is what NetApp really provides to ensure that, at the data layer for AI projects, we’re giving partners all the tools they need to help their customers succeed.

Sydney: Security and compliance are top concerns with AI-driven data. How does NetApp help partners protect customer data and reduce risk?

Mike: The best security is the security you actually use. And when it is built into the product itself, as it is with ONTAP, you are far more likely to ensure that you’re doing all you can to protect critical data.

Things like being able to identify who is accessing it, limiting the scope of the individuals who are accessing the data, as well as modeling and understanding the data itself to see when anomalies might be occurring and stopping it from traveling even further into the rest of the data sets. These are all things that NetApp has put into our operating system to make sure that security is at the heart of what they’re doing with their intelligent data infrastructure.

Sydney: Partners need to stand out in a competitive AI market. How does NetApp’s AI-optimized data strategy help them build stronger offerings and new revenue streams?

Mike: It’s a combination of the answer to all three of those questions. Starting with that broad portfolio, allowing partners to pick what is relevant to the customer base they’re serving and knowing that they’re putting forth a product that will allow the customer to adapt and grow to wherever the needs take them.

As the partner grows in their understanding of AI and how they can serve their customers, they can build upon that portfolio knowing that we’ll be able to help those customers in the cloud, at the edge and in the data center—doing so with the tools needed to truly get the most out of their data while providing protection along the way.

NetApp helps partners take a scalable, enterprise-class approach that delivers real results.

For more information, visit Netapp.com/artificial-intelligence.