NetApp INSIGHT 2024 | Jeff Baxter, NetApp

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Jeff Baxter

Vice President, Product Marketing

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Jeff Baxter, NetApp

Jeff Baxter

Vice President, Product Marketing NetApp

TheCUBE's live coverage of NetApp Insight 2024 in Las Vegas has been filled with new product announcements and evolutions, showcasing the company's focus on simplicity, savings, security, scalability, sustainability, and smarts. The VP of product marketing at NetApp, Jeff Baxter, highlighted the importance of these priorities and how they align with the company's strategy. Customers are looking to cut costs, enhance security, and leverage AI to transform their businesses. NetApp's unified architecture allows for a balance between these priorities, with a focu... Read more

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Rebecca Knight

>> Hello everyone, and welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of NetApp Insight 2024. We are here in Las Vegas. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, alongside my co-host and analyst, Rob Strechay. Rob, there's been so many new product announcements, product evolutions, rebranding. This has been that kind of show.

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah, and it's been great because we've been able to dig in with a lot of customers and partners, and people who are at the rubber meeting the road and using the technology. It's not just about the technology for technology's sake, and really, it comes back to the customer.

Rebecca Knight

>> Yeah, and how they're using it-

Rob Strechay

>> Yes....

Rebecca Knight

>> to transform their businesses. So with that, I would love to introduce our next guest, CUBE alum, Jeff Baxter. He is the VP of product marketing here at NetApp. Thank you so much for coming back on the show. Great to have you.

Jeff Baxter

>> Oh, thanks for having me. I'll show up anytime you call.

Rebecca Knight

>> Okay.

Jeff Baxter

>> I'm here.

Rebecca Knight

>> All right.

Rob Strechay

>> We thought you'd be floating around, but I was like-

Jeff Baxter

>> I appear whenever they tell me to show up for a podcast.

Rob Strechay

>> Yes, there you go.

Jeff Baxter

>> I apparate right there.

Rob Strechay

>> Very nice.

Rebecca Knight

>> So I want to start by talking... I love this. You have the six S's. This is your approach, your strategy. They are simplicity, savings, security, scalability, sustainability, and smarts.

Jeff Baxter

>> Yes.

Rebecca Knight

>> I love it. I'm a word girl.

Jeff Baxter

>> Yes.

Rebecca Knight

>> So tell me, how did this come about? And why are these priorities so core to NetApp strategy?

Jeff Baxter

>> Yeah, I think it was just a natural growth. It's funny. Some of it is... We freely admit some of it is marketing and some of it is alliteration because it's fun to say, right?

Rebecca Knight

>> It's fun, yes.

Jeff Baxter

>> And we made it because as our portfolio expanded, right? 30 years ago, we sold one storage box, right? And as we've done more and more and more, we wanted to, rather than take a portfolio view that was we sell this system and this system, and this cloud offering and this cloud offering, and this support, we wanted to take an offering that's about what can we do for the customer, right? And then the six S's are just almost our mnemonic to help us remember it, to help our sales teams and our partners remember it as they're talking about customers, and make sure that we're hitting all of them because each one of them, we think, is important to our customers, right? And so we started off 30 years ago with simplicity, right? We added on security. We've added on sustainability over time. More recently, it's been this effort to move into smarts and AI and all the things there, right? And it all kind of flowed, although we are really struggling with seventh and eighth S's. So if there's viewers suggestions, feel free, but we're kind of running thin on them, I got to say.

Rob Strechay

>> I don't know how you spell AI with a S, but-

Jeff Baxter

>> It took a lot of work.

Rob Strechay

>> Smarts is a good way to go with that.

Rebecca Knight

>> Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jeff Baxter

>> Yeah. Yeah. I'm not supposed to admit that I asked AI how to spell AI with an S and it came out with smarts, but... Well, maybe. Maybe. We'll see.

Rob Strechay

>> It's definitely good for words and obliteration. That is-

Jeff Baxter

>> For sure....

Rob Strechay

>> darn sure. I use it for that. But when you look at the priorities that the six S's present, what do you feel is the balancing between them? Because if you push in one place, it's like a balloon, it pops out somewhere else. How do you balance that out?

Jeff Baxter

>> That's a great question. I think the nice thing for us is you hear from us talking all the time about a unified architecture, right? So the nice thing is we don't have to do as much pick and choosing as you might think, right? We don't have to decide, okay, we're just going to focus on simplicity this week, and that means this part of the portfolio suffers or other things like that. It's generally tends to be more of a rising tide that lifts all boats. I will say simplicity is always the interesting one because simplicity is... There's a very delicate balance, right? And we've seen that even in the past at NetApp, where we turn the simplicity dial too hard and we suddenly lose functionality or make it harder to find functionality that our power users want. And if we keep it too complicated, then all of a sudden we're way too complicated to operate, right? And so finding that right balance is always the... I think that's the biggest balancing act. I don't think anyone will say, "Hey, you gave us too much savings." Right? I don't think we've ever heard that. Or say, "Hey, your sustainability, you're cutting down my carbon emissions way too much." Right? That's not usually an issue. But generally all of them build on each other. Anything we can do to put less footprint on the data center usually costs less money, and it usually improves the sustainability footprint, and it usually makes your infrastructure simpler, right? So they all do tend to work primarily more in harmony as opposed to being disparate forces.

Rebecca Knight

>> So it's a marketing moniker, but it's also a mission really-

Jeff Baxter

>> Yes....

Rebecca Knight

>> for you and your team. I'm sure you're having a lot of conversations with customers here on the show floor and elsewhere at this conference. What are they telling you about the biggest challenges that they're facing with their data?

Jeff Baxter

>> Yeah, so I think it comes back to... I don't want to say it comes back to the S's, but it really... What I continually hear is everyone wants to cut costs, right? And I think that's just a no brainer. It's probably true in any era. Right now, there seems to be very much an era of, how do we optimize our costs across the board? Right? So they want to hear how they can do that on their data, how they can do that on their cloud costs, and obviously we have solutions there. Security, right? Everyone here knows that at 2 AM at night in Vegas, they get woken up by a phone call, right? And that goes from being a really good day at NetApp Insight to being a really bad day back at the home office, right? And so that's one of those sort of existential threats that keeps everyone up at night, right? So that's the fear opportunity. And then yeah, they're really asking about AI. And a lot of people who are here. We have AI specialists that are here, we have data scientists, we have a lot of people, but we do have a lot of traditional storage architects here, and storage engineers, and they're curious about how we'll impact them, and they're also curious about how they can up-level their game and make themselves even more invaluable than they already are and really move up that stack. And not give up storage infrastructure, but if you can become a data infrastructure architect, you increase your value to your company n fold, basically.

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah. To me, that was kind of the key. We've been having conversations, and coming out of the keynote this morning, really around the data and the intelligent data infrastructure and how it all comes together, I think it's a cloud operating model is, to your point, what they're all looking for.

Jeff Baxter

>> Right.

Rob Strechay

>> How do you see the intelligent data infrastructure really presenting opportunities to those customers going forward?

Jeff Baxter

>> Yeah, so I think we made multiple different announcements about keystone. We've had rapid growth in keystone, right? So we see so many of those customers moving to that cloud operating model. I thought Sandeep shared a great stat, which is that we've had 0% attrition, right? So every customer who's tried keystone has stayed with it, and I don't know what higher endorsement there can be of that as an offering. That's pretty darn good. I hope we never lose one customer, because then instantly, the tagline goes, right? It doesn't sound as good to say 1%, but it's just been an outstanding success there. So we're continuing to grow that, and that really provides that cloud offering model. And then things like BlueXP where we have that hybrid control plane, so that regardless of where your data is, you can operate it like it's in a cloud. And that really is the vision. And you heard Krish share a lot of vision about this global metadata namespace, right? So we're thinking about even from another step of, how do you make your data like a cloud operating model where all of your data is just unified in a single metadata namespace? So you don't have to move all your data together, because that's mission impossible, right? Your data is never going to be collapsed into one central data lake, but actually bringing it all together in a place that you can actually have access to it, I think that's going to really be the next generation of cloud operating model taken into a data level.

Rob Strechay

>> Agreed.

Rebecca Knight

>> Yesterday on the main stage, George Kurian made a point to talk about how NetApp is drinking its own Kool-Aid or eating its own dog food, which I find so gross, but-

Rob Strechay

>> Or drinking its own champagne.

Jeff Baxter

>> Yes, there you go.

Rebecca Knight

>> That's a nice little touch.

Rob Strechay

>> There you go. There you go.

Rebecca Knight

>> That's classy.

Jeff Baxter

>> Drinking its own dog food is the worst, by the way. Don't do that. That would be bad.

Rebecca Knight

>> So gross. So gross. But at the same time, it really is important because it's showing that the NetApp is using, is leveraging its own AI to improve services and systems for its customers.

Jeff Baxter

>> Yes.

Rebecca Knight

>> So can you talk about some examples that you've seen that are most exciting to you?

Jeff Baxter

>> Yeah, so I think you saw the video yesterday from Mike Berry, right? And really, it's about... He talked about how we unified all our internal data because he's assets... I can only amplify what he said before because I've had multiple hats in NetApp, right? So I was in product management before. And depending on who you asked and what systems you asked, you got different answers, right? And when you're trying to take customer input and use it to shape our product development, which is what we always try to do, go customer in, if you're getting different answers about your customer data sets, you're on shifting sand, right? So being able to unify that into one consistent operating model across both our cloud assets and our on-prem assets to really get a picture of what our customers are doing has been outstanding for NetApp to be able to move forward in product development. And so that's just one example of how we've managed to unify things and really build this cohesive AI-driven business processes.

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah. I think, again, it's about the data.

Jeff Baxter

>> Yes.

Rob Strechay

>> And one of the big things that I look at when I'm talking to organizations and one of the keys for them is the fact that they're looking at it from a security perspective. And I think that you have a moniker.

Jeff Baxter

>> Yes.

Rob Strechay

>> Most secure storage on the planet.

Jeff Baxter

>> Yes.

Rob Strechay

>> And I think when you start to look at having been here not 30 years ago, but almost over 10 years ago now, and when there was a lot of government agencies and others that relied on NetApp storage, so it had to be secure from... And you had some of the announcements today as well around signing up and things of that nature. Kind of help us understand how really you got there and what it means to the customers.

Jeff Baxter

>> Yeah. So NetApp, decades ago, and to this day, the public sector's incredibly important for us. I know at one point, we had a data point. We were the number one storage in public sector. I believe it's still to be true, I haven't checked recently, but it's this incredible focus for us, not just because a good business for us, but because it's a good mission, right? And supporting... And not just the US public sector, by the way, but the public sector everywhere and helping them achieve their mission for societal good. And in doing that, yes, you get all sorts of penetration testing left and right. You ship your boxes to forts and random deserts, and have them tested and have them kicked, and have them melted and put on shock and vibe tables, let's just say, right? All sorts of fun stuff. And most of that wasn't directly applicable to the commercial and enterprise until very recently when ransomware and these advanced persistent threats became so commercialized, so that you can go on the dark web and buy the same attacks that used to be just the domain of nation states and now apply them to enterprises and commercial businesses, right? And so any script kitty can go out and become an expert hacker and be attacking your business. So we've taken all that expertise we built over those past few decades and applied it directly in the systems that we offer to everyone at no additional cost, right? That's why we keep saying most secure storage on the planet. And yes, I will say that 1500 times at this conference alone.

Rob Strechay

>> I'm sure.

Jeff Baxter

>> Yes.

Rebecca Knight

>> One of the biggest impediments to getting work done is the fact that so much of our work in any organization across any industry is done in silos. And that is the thing that is crazy making for employees and for leaders, but it's also it's real impediment to having successful outcomes.

Jeff Baxter

>> Yes.

Rebecca Knight

>> How is NetApp enabling customers to be silo busters?

Jeff Baxter

>> Yeah, so it's a great question. I love that phrase, right? That's the whole the way we instantiate the simplicity thing, right? It's be a silo buster, right? And we meet it on multiple levels.

Rebecca Knight

>> Silo buster starts with an S. I'm just saying.

Rob Strechay

>> Starts with an S.

Rebecca Knight

>> I'm saying.

Jeff Baxter

>> But it's kind hard

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah, there you go....

Jeff Baxter

>> simplicity, but we can use it. We can use it.

Rebecca Knight

>> Okay, great.

Jeff Baxter

>> I'll have my people call your people.

Rebecca Knight

>> Okay.

Jeff Baxter

>> I think for us, it's all about... We started 30 years ago by busting these silos between NFS and SMB, the Unix and Windows worlds fighting, and then we did SAN and NAS, right? And then we sent to object, and then we extend out to the cloud. So every step, and I think you heard it clearly from the keynote stage, it is on tap, right? It's our architecture that we've been able to extantiate across all of it, and in doing that, really break down these silos. If I could be so bold, the old architecture of saying we have a SAN team and a NAS team, I understand the merit to it, I understand the reasoning, but it's becoming a little bit dated when what's more important is, how can you use that data to drive value for your business? Right? And this whole idea of having to have multiple vendors for different things like that, that's not really the point of lock-in anymore. Everyone's using open protocols. Everyone's using open standards. So if you can optimize on single architecture, the one who has their data AI ready first is the one who's going to win, right? So building all these different silos for what do you think to be momentary advantage is going to hold businesses back in the long run. And so I think that's super exciting for us to be able to unify it and bust down those walls.

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah, I think, again, it has to be there because when you look at AI, AI needs data from everywhere.

Jeff Baxter

>> Yes.

Rob Strechay

>> It is the . You can't do AI without data. Where do you see AI being leveraged to improve your own offerings? We heard some of that earlier today from the main stage, but where do you see it making the biggest impacts?

Jeff Baxter

>> So we certainly have employed AI for auto-healing. I think there's always more we can do there. There's always more you can do there. The latest thing that we announced was in an anti-ransomware, right? And I think that's going to be a constantly evolving field because we know that AI is being used to design attacks, so it has to be used to aid in the defense as well. So that's a main thing. And then a lot of the things that Krish covered in terms of building this NetApp AI data engine directly into ONTAP. If anything, there were so many announcements in that hour and a half that it's going to take a while for people to unpack all of them, to be quite honest. And hidden in that one, this whole idea of building a NetApp AI data engine is this concept of, what if your storage platform was truly a data platform? And instead of just providing NFS and SMB and fiber channel and so on, what if it provided a vector database as a service, so that your storage architect can become a data architect and can have that AI embedded directly within system so your data scientists can just talk directly your storage system and bypass seven other data movements and all this other curation? That is exciting. It lets us jump light years ahead in terms of bringing this to the enterprise, bringing RAG, bringing inferencing, bringing all the things that are going to be widespread about AI and really democratizing it.

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah. Again, we totally agree because we see that small language models and fine-tuning and grounding of those models that they take, "Hey, we'll take Llama. We'll make it our own and use it for a particular thing." You've had customers up on stage talking about that. I think one of the things that you hit on it, and I talked to Krish earlier today, and I said I'm definitely going to follow up with him on this whole, the global metadata namespace thing, to me, seems to be a huge direction. And even with some of the name changes to some of the products being more data-focused,-

Jeff Baxter

>> Yes....

Rob Strechay

>> it seems that's kind of the direction-

Jeff Baxter

>> ...

Rob Strechay

>> you see it going.

Jeff Baxter

>> That is. We previewed it... When was it, a year ago when we called ourselves the Intelligent data infrastructure company? And some of this we knew was coming. Actually, most of this we knew was coming. And so that was a very thoughtful of rebranding of the company with the recognition that, yes, we still build infrastructure. We still sell infrastructure. We are happy to sell customer storage systems, and we're never getting out of that business, and we're happy to sell customers cloud storage. But the real goal is to help them build a data infrastructure out of it, and then make it intelligent and up-level it to being all about making data AI ready. And that's really what we find exciting about the next 30 years of NetApp.

Rebecca Knight

>> Last question.

Jeff Baxter

>> Yes.

Rebecca Knight

>> This is an incredible event. As the VP of product marketing, what is the one thing you want customers and partners to take away from this?

Jeff Baxter

>> That's a great question. I only get one thing?

Rebecca Knight

>> Sorry, get one.

Jeff Baxter

>> I got like 20.

Rebecca Knight

>> You get one.

Jeff Baxter

>> Okay, one. I think we want them to recognize that NetApp, in addition to being the most secure storage on the planet and all the other things we've talked about, that NetApp is the one that's going to help them truly make their data AI ready, that's going to help them bring AI to their data, and that we can be an ally in doing that to really help revolutionize and deal with a lot of the challenges they're going to get and the pressure they're going to get to bring AI and deliver extreme business value immediately, that we're going to be their partner to be able to do that for them immediately and as simply as possible from anyone out there in the industry.

Rebecca Knight

>> I love it. Jeff Baxter, thanks so much for returning to theCUBE.

Jeff Baxter

>> Thank you for having me.

Rebecca Knight

>> Always a lot of fun. I'm Rebecca Knight for Rob Strechay. Stay tuned for more of our coverage of NetApp Insight 2024. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in enterprise tech news and analysis.