In this interview from NetApp INSIGHT 2026 in Las Vegas, George Kurian, chief executive officer of NetApp, joins theCUBE's Rebecca Knight and theCUBE Research's Christophe Bertrand to discuss how unified storage, trusted enterprise data and an autonomous control plane are becoming the foundation for AI-ready infrastructure across hybrid and multicloud environments. Kurian frames AI factories as accelerated computing clouds whose GPUs demand power efficiency, operational scale and fast access to data, with data infrastructure increasingly the bottleneck to production AI. He details NetApp's new Novus architecture and the PEAK:AIO acquisition, which pair the resilience of Data ONTAP with a highly scalable metadata layer built on industry-standard protocols, letting organizations move from small deployments to the largest AI factories on one consistent platform.

Kurian also addresses the shift from constrained AI pilots to enterprise-wide business process transformation, noting that 93% of organizations cite data as their top obstacle to scaling AI safely. He breaks down how NetApp's metadata service enables data discovery, cataloging and governance, forming guardrails against emerging agentic AI risks. Kurian reflects on how values like humility, accountability and excellence guide NetApp's culture and client relationships, and he outlines the company's evolution from a storage provider into a data platform provider through expanded partnerships with Oracle, SAP and the major hyperscalers. From new customer and partner momentum at Insight to NetApp's own use of AI across finance, sales and product development, Kurian provides a roadmap for how enterprises can build secure, well-governed data foundations for the AI era.

This discussion, recorded live at NetApp Insight 2026, presents NetApp product strategy and artificial intelligence-scale data infrastructure. Syam Nair of NetApp, chief product officer, and Gunna Marripudi of NetApp, vice president of product management for Novus, join theCUBE Research hosts Rebecca Knight and analyst Christophe Bertrand to describe NetApp's product direction. Nair outlines expertise in storage, data platforms and product management and explains NetApp's unified storage strategy. They describe how reducing data fragmentation enables autonomous data management and addresses the AI paradox while supporting AI-ready infrastructure across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Marripudi details the Novus architecture and PEAK:AIO integration and explains pNFS scaling for multi-zettabyte deployments and metadata concurrency. They discuss metadata challenges, operator simplicity and security while underscoring a no rip-and-replace approach for customers. Key takeaways include NetApp's advancement of a unified AI-ready data infrastructure that spans hybrid and multi-cloud environments, support for agentic multi-cloud AI deployments and a focus on scalable data storage, metadata management and simplified operations.

In this interview from NetApp INSIGHT 2026, Alvaro Celis, chief partner and ecosystem officer at NetApp, joins James Cole, vice president of data center networking, business development, partnerships and go-to-market at Cisco Systems, to talk with theCUBE Research's Christophe Bertrand and theCUBE's Rebecca Knight about how NetApp and Cisco are extending their 16-year FlexPod partnership to build validated, AI-ready infrastructure for the enterprise. Celis and Cole detail how FlexPod has grown into a trusted franchise serving 10,000 enterprise customers, managing 9,000 petabytes of data and generating $21 billion in ecosystem value. They explain why validated design, rather than best-of-breed assembly, has become essential as AI workloads reshape infrastructure around the movement of data. Celis outlines the NetApp Platform's four core tenets: AI-ready data, hybrid and multicloud accessibility, built-in security and governance, and centralized visibility.

The conversation also explores how trust and security underpin the partnership's approach to agentic AI, where identity and access controls must extend to autonomous agents acting on a company's behalf. Cole details Cisco's security portfolio embedded across switches and servers, while Celis emphasizes that NetApp builds security and governance directly into its platform rather than treating it as an afterthought. Celis shares a customer example of a Fortune 500 manufacturer that used FlexPod AI to speed defect detection on its production line, reducing downtime and improving product quality. Looking ahead, both executives point to an expanding ecosystem, with new FlexPod AI and Security Fabric capabilities on the roadmap. From earning deeper customer trust to scaling innovation across a growing roster of partners, Celis and Cole outline how two decades of collaboration are positioning FlexPod as a foundation for the next era of enterprise AI infrastructure.