NetApp says AI is bringing new data buyers as it pushes Intelligent Data Infrastructure and Novus

Boko said NetApp has spent three years preparing for that shift. Intelligent Data Infrastructure is more than a product or a brand campaign, she said, describing it as an internal organizing principle for the company. “Intelligent data infrastructure is not just a thing,” Boko said. “It is a mantra of how we want to make right decisions, how we think about innovation, how we drive strategic decisions forward for our customers, for our partners and for ourselves.”

AI is accelerating several data trends at once, including jurisdictional data sovereignty, cyber resilience and hyperscaler control over compliance and workloads, according to Boko. That convergence is visible in NetApp’s pipeline: website traffic from net-new names rose about 50% year over year after the company’s keynote announcements, she said. Many of those visitors hold data-focused titles such as chief data officer rather than traditional storage roles.

“It’s not that storage or data infrastructure is cool again,” Boko said. “It is that they are asking the questions to say, ‘I need to activate my data.’ Who is going to be the best to do that?”

NetApp this week unveiled NetApp Novus, a storage architecture built to keep large GPU environments fed with data. Chief Executive Officer George Kurian has tied the architecture to production AI. Boko said the NetApp platform is designed to reach data wherever it already lives rather than lock customers into one stack.

“We are not suggesting that you want to be inside a walled garden,” she said. “We are suggesting we are already there. Help us activate your data.”

For newcomers, NetApp’s storage heritage is meant to read as proof of experience rather than baggage, Boko said. Whatever form AI takes next, the way companies access and activate their data will remain central, she added, keeping data infrastructure at the core of the conversation.

“I believe that NetApp is, for some people, a sleeping giant,” Boko said. “But we are here and we are driving the AI era. Even if AI changes tomorrow, you can absolutely guarantee that how we think about data, how we’re giving you access to it and how we are helping you activate it is going to define your future going forward.”

The interview was part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of NetApp INSIGHT. TheCUBE is a paid media partner for NetApp INSIGHT, and neither NetApp nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE, according to the disclosure.