NetApp Insight 2025: Building the Future Through Partnerships & AI with Spencer Sells

We are here at NetApp Insight 2025, and we've heard a lot about new product announcements. We've heard about how customers are building AI applications, but one of the things that stands out when you're here is the fact that NetApp works so well with other companies, with partner companies, and that's been part of the company's, uh, focus for more than three decades. So let's talk a little bit about how NetApp works with partners and what that means for the company's future.

Absolutely. So, uh, Steve, thanks for your time. Um, my name is Spencer Sales.

I've been here at NetApp almost 20 years. One of my first jobs was to build solutions for virtual infrastructure, virtual desktops. And so that meant back in 2007 we had to partner with VMware.

And at the time, VMware was owned by EMC, our biggest competitor. And so it, it helped me understand the, the power of the partnership and also clarify the motivation. Now, from a motivation, we have a mantra that, um, you go where the data is.

It's kind of simple, right? We, we do data infrastructure, data management, and storage. So we need to know the workloads.

We need to understand what do the users of the workloads need and what technologies we can come to bear. Um, another part is we ha we take pride in partnering as good partners. And what I mean by that is we know what we do, we know what we do well, and we know the boundaries of that.

So, for example, we have wonderful backup services, and if a customer wants to use our backup service, there's a great reason to do that. But we also understand customers need other parts and they may want an enterprise wide backup. So from from day one, when I came into the company and before that, we've known we were a part of the ecosystem, part of the infrastructure, but we had to play well with others in order to help customers solve their problems.

And, and that's a key differentiator for the company because many other companies in the storage space and in the data infrastructure space are building, uh, well, well, they're part of a really kind of a soup to nuts company. Mm-hmm. I mean, there's basically some very large IT vendors.

Uh, they also work with partners, but it's different because of course they have their own, um, compute, compute or they have their own GPU, they have their own software, they have their own data protection, they have their own networking. NetApp doesn't have well, any of those things. And I feel like it's given the company almost a humility in the way that, uh, products are launched and the way that technologies are embraced.

Um, it seems like NetApp is very focused on, uh, open standards and interfaces and that sort of thing. Yeah, You're absolutely right. And and I'm glad you recognized that and thank you for, for calling humility.

We understand, um, if you look at a picture, storage is always in the bottom right. And that could humble you 'cause we're always in the bottom. But it's also, we take it as we're the foundation.

We know we have to work with those pieces above in order to provide value. We also understand, um, and are committed to the idea of best of breed. We aren't going to win by locking customers in or channel partners into a entire stack.

That's not what we do. We need to build a better mouse trap, build a better what we do, and then give choice. And so that's been the DNA and will continue to be our DNA.

In fact, we actually even focused it more and are doing more of work in that ONTAP and NetApp infrastructure. Yeah, I I I think that that shows, uh, compared to, um, you know, five years ago, so you and I were at Insight five years ago, um, and it's not like NetApp was doing it wrong, but I really feel like there's a more consistent messaging and there's more of a focus on this. And, and let me give you a couple of examples that I'd like to zoom in on here.

So the first one is the fact that the new data platform, the AI data, AI Data engine engine, um, it seems like it goes so far, but only so far. Yeah. Because NetApp recognizes that companies already have other AI platforms of choice, other AI solutions that they're building, and it would be foolish for the company to basically try to invade that space.

Yeah. So it feels like the, um, the goal of the company is to provide sort of a solid foundation for whatever tool you're using for your AI build out. That's exactly it.

So that, that's one thing that I noticed. Another thing that I noticed, uh, was a very telling slide during the keynotes, and of course in all of our discussions, which showed all the, like the three big, uh, hyperscaler providers. And NetApp is the only company that I know of that has a native integration in all, uh, in, in Amazon, in, uh, Google and in and Microsoft Azure.

And, um, and it showed that in a very sort of egalitarian way. It was basically, here's where your data could be. And both of those things I think kind of speak to this partner approach.

Yeah, that's exactly right. And I'm glad it's coming through. I'll go back to my VMware days, but also then come forward with ai.

Our, our idea was we create better snapshots and clones and replication. That's what we do, but you need to get it usable by the actual operators and users. And many of those are people we didn't call on.

So our job was to get into vCenter. So now I go to AI and um, I'll take a for example, domino Data Labs, they call on data scientists. Data scientists don't want to know what the storage is.

Yeah. They don't care. But Domino created Domino, NetApp volumes under the covers.

It's using our clones, our snapshots. And what Domino is doing is leveraging our capabilities, giving it the right value props. So for the data scientists, it's, it's reproducibility, it's collaboration, it's ability to present data into a new model area.

It could be in the cloud. We wouldn't have thought of that. We wouldn't have known what to call it.

And we co we don't sell to those people. So the idea is do the snaps, the clones, the replications, all of those things, including in A IDE and then partner with the people who compliment that can use those capabilities as well. Yeah.

And I'll just point out that, uh, the Tech Field day delegates heard from Domino Data Labs on that integrated solution. Um, we didn't record that as a tech field day session, but it was really enlightening because Exactly. We brought in some folks who are in the data and analytics space, and they were very happy to hear Domino Data labs talking their language.

Yeah. And um, and, and it seems like that's what happens with customers too. Yeah, That's exactly it.

And, and there's some humility there in, Hey, we know how to talk storage to storage administrators, and we can get to a, an infrastructure admin or a data engineer. We really don't know above that. But also when you talk, when you think ai, um, it's in our own best interest because it's such a fast moving area, so many different tools, and we have to be able to fit in to the pipelines as they already exist for customers and as they will change as well.

So it's in our best interest to be able to partner well, um, and efficiently. And on that, um, it may, it wasn't as highlighted as much, but open source is critical. Yeah.

So we bought Insta Cluster for open source data technologies in the AI space. We're adding more open source areas where we are contributing code. Um, and so we want to be a, a faithful member, a good participant in open source programs and projects contribute code to improve the entire community.

And we see that especially important in the area of Ai. Absolutely. Well, ai, um, fundamentally is built on open source projects.

Mm-hmm. Um, and, and as is the data space pre, you know, predominantly most of the data and analytics engines are also, uh, open source. And so it really benefits you and benefits, uh, NetApp's customers as well if you are deeply involved in those, uh, open source projects.

We think so. And, and that's the, um, that's the strategy. Uh, we we're gonna continue to do that, be it a, a Kubernetes and CSI or, or Cassandras and Kafkas or, or Lang chains and, and you know, other open source, open core and extensions.

Um, and I think we have a reputation of being a good partner. Mm-hmm. Meaning, um, we, we don't get everything right, but what we say we're gonna do, we do.

Uh, and we know where we, we work and where we don't work. Yeah. And I think that served us well.

Yeah. And, and I think that all of this means that for the NetApp customer, it means that they can feel comfortable buying this because they're not gonna be pushed or, you know, shoved toward this partner or that partner. It's gonna be a case of, well, we support standard protocols, we support standard APIs, we support open source, we support all the, you know, the cloud providers, we support the, the different analytics engines, we support the different AI engines and whatever you're doing, it's gonna work with NetApp, it's Gonna work.

That's exactly right. And, and not just work today, but work in a year and two and three and four and five years. 'cause um, organizations can't afford to refresh or add gear all the time.

They need the comfort and the confidence that what they purchase has some extensibility and it's hard to tell what they will need and which tools and, and workloads they're gonna have in in a couple years. That's why we need to continue to provide them this ontap extensible network to give them this choice and give them that, that that investment protection. Well, I would say another thing that's interesting too is that you've got a seat at the table in AWS and Azure and Google Cloud that's unusual that, that they would welcome you in because they actually do have products that are maybe not a hundred percent competitive, but are alternatives Yep.

To what NetApp is doing in the cloud. But yet they're welcoming you there. Why is that?

Uh, well there's a couple things, and I'll take you back to Microsoft first. We've had conversations where Microsoft has told us they'll put us outta business. This is going back like 15 years, 20 years.

Oh yeah. Back in in the day. Yeah, Back in the day.

Um, they've gotten over that, and there's a couple things. One is they do see the install base. ONTAP is the most used storage operating system.

They would love all of that to go into the cloud, but they also understand the value we bring and the data management and the proven capabilities. So yeah, while they would maybe thought about it first, I don't wanna just suck all that data, they realized, no, this helps me go get data in the cloud. And if you look at a high level clouds are doing well, there's still a lot more it on premises.

So from a Microsoft point of view, it was more of a, Hey, you know what, we're filling gaps. And they would rather spend their engineering resources on other things. AWS is a retailer and just like they did with um, RDS and having their own databases, but also a commercial databases, they approach storage that way and they understand where ONTAP has value and they're doing joint engineering with us in order to get more workloads in AWS Google rinse and repeat, same sort of thing.

They understand as Google is taking over or trying to take large contracts and large swaths of it. They can't do that without solid file services. And so that's why they came to us.

So they each had their own reasons to want to use our storage capabilities. And from us, we saw that. Um, and same idea about the, the what we were talking about with the technology choice.

You have flexibility customer to use the cloud and the environment that you want. And one of the interesting things about those three especially is that their cloud environments, their cloud platforms are actually quite different. Mm-hmm.

They're not a direct substitution. So if you're an Azure customer, it's not just sort of, oh, I'm gonna switch to Google. No, no, no.

These are important partners to their customers, to the enterprises that are actually out there building. And so NetApp's response to that was not to put a cookie cutter instance of ONTAP in Google Am these products are very different. And I think that that's one of the things that comes as a surprise to people.

They have different names that comes as a surprise to People, But they also have different architectures and there's different elements there. And I think that that is another sign of basically NetApp looking at Google and saying, Hey, what do Google's customers need? Yeah.

Not, Hey, can we just move this into the cloud? That's exactly right. And, and that's, that can got get forgotten when we did the projects initially in a continuing engineering that is joint engineering with each of them.

And they are three very different companies and they serve different clienteles as well. So while many organizations are multi-cloud, there's some areas and some industries that have proclivities to one or the other and just ways of thinking and how they've designed their clouds. So it's not the exact same, um, capabilities in each 'cause.

We do tailor it to that cloud and who that cloud is targeting and, and where they want to bring their businesses. So I think that those of us who are listening, I, I think maybe, you know, they can understand why NetApp is a good partner and why these partners want to work with NetApp and why NetApp wants to work with these partners. Because it very much is a collaboration that comes across very well in, uh, events like Insight.

It comes across very well with the product announcements that have been happening in between events like Insight. And I really appreciate you kind of helping me, uh, navigate that and understand that here. So thank you very much for listening to this.

If you are interested in learning more about some of the things that NetApp announced at Insight 2025, uh, check out the tech field Day plus YouTube channel. You'll find a video about, uh, the new Lee launched a FX storage platform. You'll find out more about the AI data engine, the ways that AI is serving the needs of data scientists, and also the way that NetApp works with customers in those videos.

And of course, on the main tech field, a YouTube channel, you can see deep dive presentations from NetApp on all of these subjects as well.