NetApp has entered a strategic partnership with NVIDIA to support the NVIDIA AI Data Platform reference design in NetApp AIPod solutions, aiming to help Australian enterprises and government agencies improve their data infrastructure for artificial intelligence applications.
This partnership is designed to address the challenges faced by organisations in managing fragmented data environments, a barrier to adopting AI technologies. NetApp AIPod deployments built on the NVIDIA AI Data Platform will aim to provide secure, governed, and scalable data pipelines for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and inference tasks.
According to NetApp, a recent Data Complexity report found that 79 percent of technology and business leaders believe that unifying their data estates is critical for attaining top AI outcomes by 2025. The partnership is positioned as a response to this need, supporting enterprises in breaking down data silos across both cloud and on-premises environments.
Sandeep Singh, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Enterprise Storage at NetApp, said, "A unified and comprehensive understanding of business data is the vehicle that will help companies drive competitive advantage in the era of intelligence, and AI inferencing is the key. We have always believed that a unified approach to data storage is essential for businesses to get the most out of their data. The rise of agentic AI has only reinforced that truly unified data storage goes beyond just multi-protocol storage. Businesses need to eliminate silos throughout their entire IT environment, whether on-premises and in the cloud, and across every business function, and we are working with NVIDIA to deliver connected storage for the unique demands of AI."
The integrated solution incorporates NVIDIA accelerated computing to run NVIDIA NeMo Retriever microservices, connecting these processing nodes to scalable storage via NetApp's platform. This enables customers to scan, index, classify, and retrieve large quantities of documents in real time, supporting more accurate and effective AI agents that can undertake complex, multi-step tasks in enterprise settings.
Rob Davis, Vice President of Storage Technology at NVIDIA, commented, "Agentic AI enables businesses to solve complex problems with superhuman efficiency and accuracy, but only as long as agents and reasoning models have fast access to high-quality data. The NVIDIA AI Data Platform reference design and NetApp's high-powered storage and mature data management capabilities bring AI directly to business data and drive unprecedented productivity."
The NVIDIA AI Data Platform is designed to align with NetApp's approach to advanced data management by making use of continuously updated metadata and vectorisation. This facilitates the delivery of timely, relevant, and accurate results in AI queries, supporting industries where data governance and security are particularly important.
The solution is being positioned for government agencies and highly regulated sectors in Australia, where the management of secure and governed data access is frequently a requirement. This, according to NetApp, will help these organisations prepare their data environments and infrastructure for current and future AI initiatives.
NetApp's collaboration with NVIDIA is part of its broader intent to supply enterprise-grade infrastructure that supports advanced use cases and the operational scaling of AI across business functions. With the increasing adoption of AI by enterprises addressing complex challenges, the partnership aims to ensure that the necessary storage, data management, and computational resources are available in the Australian and New Zealand markets.
