October 14, 2025 — Leads & Copy — NetApp® (NASDAQ: NTAP) has introduced new products aimed at bolstering its enterprise-grade data platform for AI innovation, addressing the shift towards mission-critical agentic applications. The new NetApp AFX decouples performance and capacity with a disaggregated NetApp ONTAP, running on the new NetApp AFX 1K storage system. NetApp AI Data Engine, integrated with the NVIDIA AI Data Platform reference design, is a secure, unified extension of ONTAP that helps organizations simplify and secure the AI data pipeline. These capabilities unify high-performance storage and intelligent data services into a single, scalable offering that accelerates AI retrieval augmented generation (RAG) and inference across hybrid and multicloud environments. Customers can access these products through direct purchase or subscription to NetApp Keystone STaaS.
Syam Nair, Chief Product Officer at NetApp, stated that the new NetApp AFX systems provide customers with a choice in on-premises enterprise storage, built on a comprehensive data platform. He added that NetApp AI Data Engine allows customers to connect their data across hybrid multicloud environments to build a unified data foundation, accelerating AI data pipelines by integrating multiple data preparation and management steps.
NetApp also introduced new capabilities to accelerate modern AI workloads, including NetApp AFX and NetApp AI Data Engine (AIDE). NetApp AFX is an all-flash storage system for AI workloads, certified for NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD supercomputing and powered by NetApp ONTAP. AIDE is an AI data service designed to simplify AI adoption, offering a global view of a customer’s NetApp data estate for fast searching and curation. It automates data change detection and synchronization, leveraging the NVIDIA AI Data Platform reference design.
Customers can now access Azure NetApp Files data through an Object REST API, available in public preview. This allows direct connection of NFS and SMB datasets to Microsoft Fabric, Azure OpenAI, and other Azure services. Enterprises can also unify their global data estate across cloud and on-premises into Microsoft Azure with new FlexCache capabilities in Azure NetApp Files.
Justin Boitano, Vice President at NVIDIA, noted that NetApp’s data platform has transformed into an AI-native storage platform by integrating NVIDIA accelerated computing and software. Michael Leone, Practice Director and Principal Analyst at Omdia, stated that NetApp’s solutions demonstrate a deep understanding of customers’ real challenges in managing data for AI.
NetApp will present sessions and demos at NetApp INSIGHT 2025 in Las Vegas, October 14–16.
Learn more at https://www.netapp.com/product-updates.
Tune in to the keynote sessions at: https://www.netapp.com/insight/
Source: NetApp
