‘Everyone else is doing what we did 10 years ago. We are the only natively-integrated cloud platform. We are bringing other cloud providers like Oracle Cloud and SAP Cloud into our ecosystem, so that now you can get native offerings in the Oracle Cloud, just like you can do in the other hyperscalers. We are bringing our suite of data engine capabilities to the cloud platforms. We have advanced integrations with their AI capabilities,’ says NetApp CEO George Kurian.
NetApp CEO George Kurian calls his company an intelligent data infrastructure provider built for AI, hybrid cloud and cyber resilience, as opposed to the traditional classification of NetApp as a storage vendor.
In an exclusive interview with CRN during the NetApp Insight 2026 conference held this week in Las Vegas, Kurian said NetApp’s software brings together unified storage, security, data protection, metadata, and movement across data centers and clouds, allowing customers to build AI-ready data in place while retaining control.
“We have long ago progressed beyond just having the most capable storage on the planet,” he said. “We have a suite of software that really allows people to use their data effectively.”
[Related: NetApp CEO George Kurian On AI, Cloud Growth, Memory Shortages And What’s Next]
Kurian argued that NetApp’s early move into cloud has put it well ahead of competitors, citing native integrations with hyperscalers including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, as well as a new partnership to run NetApp’s storage technology natively on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and a growing SAP relationship.
Rather than diminishing the importance of on-premises infrastructure, he said hybrid demand strengthens NetApp’s value proposition by giving customers flexibility to place data where it makes the most operational and economic sense.
“Cloud is not inherently cheaper or inherently more expensive,” he said. “It is really tied to how you use it. It’s the same with on-premises. So we give people the tools to use both effectively.”
AI is the centerpiece of that strategy. Kurian said the DataPelago and planned Peak:AIO acquisitions are intended to sharpen NetApp’s position in AI data infrastructure by improving the path between storage and GPU compute and making inferencing more efficient.
Kurian also said that NetApp will remain disciplined about where it competes, pairing focused internal investments with external technology partnerships. Channel partners are central to bringing those technologies together for customers and creating new revenue from existing NetApp expertise,” he said.
“We’re not just trying to keep up,” he said. “We are trying to be a leader in shaping how it evolves. I think you have to be incredibly disciplined about where you choose to play in a rapidly transforming industry, and we have been very disciplined.”
There’s a lot going on at NetApp and the company’s focus on bringing unprecedented performance and scalability of data to AI. To learn more, read CRN’s complete conversation with Kurian, which has been lightly edited for clarity.
How do you define NetApp right now?
NetApp is the intelligent data infrastructure company. With our NetApp Platform, we allow customers to unify their storage to build AI-ready data in place without copies, to have the best security and protection of the data, and to have complete control of the data wherever it lives in your data center or the cloud. And what we believe is that it helps organizations be more effective in using their data to power their business.
Where does the intelligence come from?
The intelligence comes from all the software capabilities we have: the built-in security controls, the ability to move data flexibly between clouds and data centers, the ability to not only have data but all of the metadata associated with the data and use the metadata with technologies like knowledge graphs. It’s really the software in the platform that brings intelligence. We have long ago progressed beyond just having the most capable storage on the planet. We have a suite of software that really allows people to use their data effectively.
A lot of people still classify NetApp as a storage company. I don’t think there’s a category yet for intelligent data infrastructure. So my question is this: Is storage no longer as sexy as it was?
I think you have to keep innovating at all levels. The announcements that we [made at Insight] for the AI factory are innovations in storage, just like the announcements we made a decade ago about how to integrate storage architectures between cloud and data centers. You’ve got to innovate at every layer of the stack, and so we are proud of the innovations we’re making to transform storage architectures while also adding a lot of intelligence. For example, adding cyber resilience where the data is created, our AI Data Engine able to transform the data, and so on. So it’s a continuous journey of innovation at every layer of the stack.
NetApp was probably the first storage vendor according to the classical definition of storage vendor to embrace the cloud and to really embrace moving data to the cloud at the risk of maybe selling less on-prem infrastructure at the time. Now it seems like almost every storage vendor is doing that, especially on the enterprise side. Does that increase pressure on NetApp to continue to innovate faster?
We are light years ahead of everybody else. Everyone else is doing what we did 10 years ago. We are the only natively-integrated cloud platform. We are bringing other cloud providers like Oracle Cloud and SAP Cloud into our ecosystem, so that now you can get native offerings in the Oracle Cloud, just like you can do in the other hyperscalers. We are bringing our suite of data engine capabilities to the cloud platforms. We have advanced integrations with their AI capabilities. For example, with AWS Bedrock using S3 access points into the Amazon application suite, with Google Cloud Vertex, with Microsoft OneLake. So we continue to increase the distance between the competition and us today.
NetApp’s new partnership with Oracle, is it on the same level as NetApp’s partnerships with Google, Azure, and AWS?
Correct.
How did that come about?
It starts with the customer, and we have clients that we share with Oracle who wanted capable technologies like we have to be in the Oracle Cloud. We have worked with Oracle for many years, so it became an evolution of our relationship with them. … We have a joint value proposition that’s resonating with customers. It always starts with customers.
NetApp at Insight said it is deepening its SAP relationship as well. Will that be at the same level as NetApp’s hyperscaler relationships?
We are working towards that. I think we will. We have announced a strategic collaboration where we are starting at the customer premises where a lot of SAP deployments are today, but over time we want to make it a hybrid environment.
How about other hyperscalers like IBM Cloud or a few Chinese-based hyperscalers. Could you see the type of that level of partnership with these companies?
We already do a lot of work with IBM Cloud. They’re a very large NetApp customer, and we have done that even before IBM acquired SoftLayer. SoftLayer was a very big NetApp customer, and so we continue those relationships. I don’t want to comment about other cloud providers before we have solutions with them.
OK, but the possibility of expanding to other cloud providers is there?
We have always looked at opportunities to meet different customer requirements, and we are not ruling anybody in and not ruling anybody out.
With NetApp’s relationships with the hyperscalers, and more importantly NetApp’s embrace of multicloud infrastructures, does that lessen the value of on-premises storage over time?
It actually enhances the value of our on-premises storage. Today, we see more and more clients wanting to do hybrid environments. For example, customers want to have reserved instances in some of the clouds because of their concerns about silicon availability. They want to be able to take data that sits on premises and burst it into the cloud so they can use their cloud applications. We have seen, for example, extraordinarily fast uptake of the work that we did with Amazon around S3 access points. So it gives us a differentiated value proposition on-premises.
OK, but does that mean over time customers will invest less in on-premises storage as they see the value of NetApp on the cloud and with the hyperscalers?
Our view is whether a client decides to do it on-premises or the cloud is a client choice. I think we have two value propositions for every client. One is, if you’re going to use the cloud, we have the best solutions on the cloud, and we can capture that client on the cloud. And you will see, as we have shared with our investors, approximately 50 percent of our cloud customers have never bought NetApp on-premises. The second is for an on-premises customer who’s thinking about the cloud, we are unquestionably the best choice because we uniquely give them a roadmap to the cloud. It allows us to win share in the cloud that didn’t exist before for us, and it allows us to win share on-premises because of the opportunity we give clients. No one else can do that.
Do you see any customer push to embrace more of a cloud infrastructure because of the rising cost of on-premises equipment?
I think there are people who are looking at having cloud be a place of, let’s say, safety or insurance in case they don’t get the supply of on-premises storage. I’ve not seen it broadly for cost reasons yet.
Could it happen?
I don’t rule anything in or out at this point.
As you look at the cost of maintaining data on premises versus in the cloud and bringing the two together, how do the economics factor in? How is the increasing cost of storage hardware influencing customer choice of where they want to keep their data?
I think it really comes down to the discipline of operations that you have. Our solutions are very effective on-premises because we have the ability to automate data movement from high-cost flash to cost-effective hard drives as the data ages, without our end users needing to do anything. That is unique in the market. So we can give customers the most effective price points for and optimize their on-premises environment with regard to cloud and on-prem. One of the things that we have seen in the cloud world is the importance of operational discipline. If you leave instances in the cloud running without shutting them down, it can quickly run up the cloud bill. Cloud is not inherently cheaper or inherently more expensive. It is really tied to how you use it. It’s the same with on-premises. So we give people the tools to use both effectively.
NetApp has made a couple of big acquisitions recently, including DataPelago, JetStream Software, and the planned acquisition of Peak:AIO. Why acquire those companies? What’s the main goal of these acquisitions?
I think it is to give us the leadership position in data infrastructure for the AI world. Each of them brings unique capabilities to NetApp. Peak:AIO gives us the ability to deliver to customers the highest performance, most scalable infrastructure for AI factories, model builders, and hyperscalers, and NetApp with Peak:AIO is an order of magnitude better than anybody else. DataPelago is an acceleration technology that sits at the layer above storage to make processing frameworks much more optimized. And the combination of these two technologies makes the data path between GPU compute and storage super efficient. Peak:AIO and NetApp, our Novus solution can allow you to feed at line rate, meaning without any degradation of performance, very large GPU clusters. And then DataPelago allows inferencing workloads to process that data much more efficiently so that you need fewer GPUs, or you can use the GPUs that you have much more efficiently.
What are some other things you think NetApp needs to complete this AI infrastructure picture?
We have a lot of new capabilities at the Data Engine layer, which is going through transformation. There are a lot of different new technologies that are being created. Some have succeeded, some have not, and so that’s a place where we see opportunity to build a more consolidated position, and we will look at technologies as they develop to see what the right ones are. We’re not going to buy everything in that segment. We have built a lot of capabilities, for example, the metadata engine and the data discovery solutions, but there will be things that you can’t rule out from buying.
The AI business is moving probably faster than any other part of the IT business historically. How can NetApp keep up with the changes in AI? Is it even possible for any company, including NetApp, to keep up with speed of changes needed to help customers with AI?
We’re not just trying to keep up. We are trying to be a leader in shaping how it evolves. I think you have to be incredibly disciplined about where you choose to play in a rapidly transforming industry, and we have been very disciplined. We’ve said we are the intelligent data infrastructure provider for AI. That means the best, highest performing unified storage. It means you have to have built-in security controls. You have to have good protection policies and observability of your data. And it means you have to have a suite of technologies, the AI Data Engine, to transform data in place. I think those are very focused bets, and we intend to be the best in the world at those.
There are many other elements of the AI transformation that we are not participating in, but are partnering for them. And that allows us to be focused in our investments and fast pace in delivering on them while also giving customers a full solution through partnering.
How often do you meet with NetApp’s channel partners?
I’m going on the road for several weeks in a row. Right after Insight, this week I’m going to the Middle East, and then to Chicago when I get back, and then to Dallas. So it’s a continuous blitz. And at each of those junctions, we need channel partners.
What do you tell channel partners that they need to do to be ready for what NetApp is offering when it comes to AI, which again is changing so quickly?
I think they need to be enabled on the differentiated value that we bring. One of the unique things that we have done is the way we have continued to bring our prior investments forward as these eras have changed. We’ve brought OnTap to the hyperscaler clouds. We’ve brought OnTap to the AI era. It allows partners the opportunity to invest in and learn one set of technologies from NetApp. And we have truly uniquely in the market given them a return on investment from their learning that technology. We also allow them to use their knowledge of other parallel capabilities, Nvidia’s capabilities, the hyperscaler capabilities, and so on, so they can build full solutions. That’s on the enablement side. In terms of what customers want, channel partners have an important role to play in taking these technology platforms, deploying them, and making them successful for customers. And so the channel is at different stages in its evolution on that journey.
Earlier I asked you to define NetApp. Let me now ask you to define what is the ideal NetApp channel partner.
The ideal NetApp channel partner has knowledge of the customer and deep knowledge of NetApp, and someone with whom we have worked with in a deep, committed partnership. And they deliver value that bridges NetApp technology to customer landscapes and use cases.
Do you see the channel keeping up with all the big changes going on not only in NetApp but with AI and multi-cloud infrastructures and so on?
I don’t want to characterize the channel as one. I think there are so many participants in it. Some of the leading channel providers clearly are keeping up or even leading the market, and others probably have more work to do, just like every other institution in the world.
Is there anything else that you would like to say to readers?
I think NetApp is bringing extraordinarily powerful solutions for the AI factories and model builders, for the agentic enterprise, and for hybrid cloud infrastructure. We work with the technology partner ecosystem to deliver those. We enable our partners to build new revenue streams from prior investments in NetApp, and we’re looking forward to expanding the opportunities together.
