NetApp INSIGHT 2026 | Alvaro Celis, NetApp & James Cole, Cisco

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Transcript

Alvaro Celis, NetApp & James Cole, Cisco

Alvaro Celis

Chief Partner and Ecosystem Officer NetApp

James Cole

VP, Data Center Networking, Business Development, Partnerships and Go To Market Cisco

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, mana... Read more

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Can you talk about the partnership with Cisco and how that collaboration has driven the development and success of the FlexPod franchise? add

As organizations move from AI trials to operational deployment, what are customers reporting about their goals, challenges, and infrastructure needs for AI? add

What is NetApp's role in building partnerships and an ecosystem, and how does the NetApp Platform address customers' core data needs (AI readiness, data location, security/governance, and management)? add

How is Cisco addressing security and trust in AI—including agentic AI—and what security solutions has it developed across its products and infrastructure? add

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Alvaro Celis, NetApp & James Cole, Cisco

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(INTRO)

Rebecca Knight

>> Hello everyone. Good afternoon and welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of NetApp Insight 2026. We are on the homestretch of our coverage. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, sitting alongside Christophe Bertrand, who is theCUBE Research analyst in residence. We have two fantastic guests for this next segment. I would like to welcome James Cole. He is VP Data Center Networking Business Development Partnerships and Go-to-Market at Cisco.

James Cole

>> That is a long title, but it's all fun. All fun stuff. It does sound like fun.

Christophe Bertrand

>> Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rebecca Knight

>> And Alvaro Celis, Chief Partner and Ecosystem Officer at NetApp. Welcome all. Alvaro, welcome back.

James Cole

>> Yeah.

Rebecca Knight

>> So I want to start out because we know that we're living through this moment of unprecedented technological change with the arrival of AI. And it's not a new arrival, but the real adoption and embrace of AI. Both of you had been retired, I should say, but both of you recently started at your companies because the opportunity was too compelling. I want to have you start, James, first. Tell us a little bit about your role, your remit, and what it is that brought you back in because this was just too good to pass up.

James Cole

>> Right. the opportunity is just tremendous. the Cisco product portfolio and the partnerships we bring together with our counterparts in the ecosystem, it's a perfect storm of opportunity. The way computing is evolving, the needs of AI are evolving, and we're just at the beginning of this. So I thought, what a great thing to be part of this kind of early in the process and to help it evolve and transform transition and translate into just new things we could never imagine a few years back that we could do with AI as we move forward. So too good of an opportunity to not come back and take part in.

Rebecca Knight

>> Okay. Alvaro, how about you? You were 32 years at Microsoft.

Alvaro Celis

>> Yeah, look, when I hit my 32 years, I thought I have done everything I had to do. I'm like, yeah we've been all over the world, lived in Asia, run global businesses. I was blessed by that career. And then I thought I was ready to take it easy. I don't think that's in my nature. But then I came back and said, look, I will go back and do it if 3 things are true. Is it a project that is meaningful enough to give me energy and passion to get out of bed and do crazy hours the way I like to do? I like to work hard. Am I working with people that I respect and admire, I can learn from, and I can share? And will that leave a legacy that I feel proud that is worth being away from my family? And then an opportunity met those three and blew it out of the water. It was too good to pass. I could apply my acumen working with people that I really respect and like, an amazing team, incredible partners. It was too good. It's too good to pass, too good to stay home. So I'm delighted to be here. It's been 5 months and it feels like a minute.

Rebecca Knight

>> So now tell— talk a little bit about the partnership. And you said terrific partners like Cisco.

Alvaro Celis

>> Yeah.So I think that in essence, we have a shared passion for customers and we have cracked a formula that has created an incredible franchise that is legendary in the industry, FlexPod. So I want to go a little bit off script here. when you look at FlexPod, it's been, what, 16 years

James Cole

>> together?Yeah, 16

Alvaro Celis

>> years.Right. We have created an incredible alignment at the engineering level. With prescriptive architecture, services, support, data management, and an ecosystem of partners that are rallying around it. So it's not only Cisco and NetApp, it's our shared channel that is actually making it real for customers so we can execute at scale. I'm talking about a 16-year franchise that has touched and been able to serve 10,000 enterprise customers, 9,000 petabytes of data, and has generated the humble amount of $21 billion of value in the ecosystem. That's amazing. It takes a very special partner like Cisco and an incredible shared channel for us to be able to achieve that type of service for customers.

Christophe Bertrand

>> Well, so let's talk about AI and let's talk about where we're at now. Just like there is no AI without data, there is no AI without networking. Okay, so very clearly we need each other here. But I'd like to talk about what you're seeing now that we're past maybe this first phase of, sort of sandbox trial, etc. Now we're getting into this part of operationalization of AI. What are you hearing from customers, James?

James Cole

>> Yeah, yeah. Fundamentally for a business customer, AI is about taking their valuable business data and turning it into a valuable outcome for their business at machine speed, machine scale, right? That's how they get efficiency and effective outcomes from AI? Now, behind that is a huge complex system that has to work together, right? You've got storage, you've got networking, you've got compute, you've got operations, and then anywhere you have valuable data, you have tremendous amounts of security to protect it, right? So the complexity really drives some hesitancy. Sometimes it can delay your ability to implement, it can put risk into your environment. And the other thing we see with AI in this day and age is the AI workloads are very different, right? They're very different than traditional workloads of the past. They look different. They require different things from the architecture and from the infrastructure. So we want to work together to bring AI in to help define the new infrastructure. 20 years ago, 10 years ago, you would've been designing your data structures and your applications around the infrastructure. Now we've turned that on its head. You're really designing the infrastructure around the movement of data. And who better to do that together than the person you trust with your data and the person you trust with your network?

Alvaro Celis

>> Right.

Rebecca Knight

>> So, but building on that a little bit, because as you said in the past, this is what— this is the way things work, that enterprises built them themselves out of best-of-breed components and parts. But now that's really changing. What is— I think I know what you're going to say, but what's driving that change in terms of why that's happening?

James Cole

>> Yeah. the validated design concept is really critical here because all the customer wants at the end of the day is a trusted platform that they know is going to work, that they know is going to deliver, that they know will give them the ROI they're looking for. Right. And the desired outcome for their business to help run their business better. Unfortunately, you have infrastructure that's expensive. You have infrastructure that's very complex, but it has to be highly integrated to deliver on those outcomes. So that's where the validated design concept can come in. You can take partners in the ecosystem that can bring the best in breed, best in class things together, test them and validate them in a way where they are that trusted solution that can perform to business need. And it's also supported by vendors you trust. Right? So I think that's the way you bring the best of breed of the ecosystem together in a way to reduce the risk and increase the ROI.

Christophe Bertrand

>> So overall, we've just talked about validated platforms. I'd like to just double-click on that a little bit because I think it's very interesting what has fundamentally changed in the past few years. Because again, to echo Rebecca's comments, for years we were told you have to do best of breed. In the enterprise. really, nobody would try anything else. Well, now it's different. It's not about having a specific point solution or the one tool, the best tool for the job. It's really about having a platform, having a validated architecture for a variety of jobs, and of course at scale. So tell me what has changed and why this concept of validation Why is it so important for customers to really double-click on that?

Alvaro Celis

>> Thank you. That's an excellent question. And look, the way you want to think about it in the era of AI, what gets in the way, what the customer really needs is, is my data ready? Is my data accessible? Is it properly protected and is it properly governed? And that is a tall order. It takes a village to answer that question. So the way we believe that this needs to be answered is you need to give customer choice by creating these partnerships that allow you to really work with world-class solutions in the industry that will serve you better. But you got to be sure that you do that without transferring the complexity of working with best-in-class to the customer because that goes against the customer obsession. So you create a high-performance ecosystem by really aligning everyone around the customer outcome and the customer needs. The Validated Design, the power that it really brings is it allows us to look at alignment at the product level, service, support, the ecosystem integration that you need in order for the customer to have the flexibility that they want, but also with the certainty that it will work and it can work at scale. That's what makes this magic.

Rebecca Knight

>> So, so many leaders feel this pressure to move fast, which is not surprising considering the dizzying number of announcements we heard just in the last 2 days here at Insight. But at the same time, there's a lot of pressure around security. We also see headlines every day that are frankly quite scary. How are you seeing customers balance this and walk this tightrope of moving fast, being innovative, doing everything at machine speed, versus also saying, okay, we need to make sure that we are being safe and secure here?

Alvaro Celis

>> Yeah, look, what the customers are asking us to do is, are you sure that I can go and get my distributed enterprise data to work at scale in a trustworthy, reliable manner? Can we solve for that? And that's what we do together by combining the innovation, the reference design, the validated design architecture, and the ecosystem. We believe our role at NetApp is to be sure that we have the best partnerships in the industry, that we develop the culture in the company and in our ecosystem to be able to deliver that value for the customer. And then on the innovation front, we create the NetApp Platform where we go and say we want to solve the 4 most basic data needs that you have as a customer. Your data will be AI ready. We're going to meet your data where it lives, on-premise or in any cloud. We're going to be sure that security and governance are built into the platform, not as an afterthought, but as part of the core value prop. And we'll give you a console that will allow you to look into all that so you can adjust your solution for the demanding needs. But you have the flexibility to work with best-in-class solutions like Cisco FlexPod.

James Cole

>> And I think both companies also do a good job of meeting customers where they are. Everybody's going to be at a different phase. They have a different risk tolerance. They have better security, so they're more worried about getting their implementation going. Some are less on the security side, so they need to focus more there. So we really want to meet customers where they are with solutions that help them move forward in their journey. Right. And I always think through it as startup speed with enterprise discipline. Right. I think those are the two things you want constantly, you know, testing your environment, right, that enterprise discipline that you know, run your big businesses but at that startup speed, right? And I think if you bring those together in the right way to counterbalance, that's how you move forward productively but keep the tension in the system so you're not missing anything along the way.

Rebecca Knight

>> Well, and that gets back to what Alvaro was saying too about culture and making sure you have the right culture within your organization but also within the ecosystem. But that's maybe not something you can control. How do you think about that and approach this idea of making sure that you have the right ethos and habits and mindset?

Alvaro Celis

>> I think that everything starts by asking a fundamental question. Are we all aligned that the most important thing is to serve the customer and solve the customer problem, allow them to achieve the outcome that they want? If that is your North Star, then everything else lines up. In a very nice way. And people will self-select. Not everyone needs to be part of this. That's okay. when you look at the success that we have with FlexPod, we just have one win. I know we cannot disclose the name, but we have this Fortune 500 manufacturing company that with FlexPod AI launched the solution to look at defects in the manufacturing line in a record time implementation. They increase the ability, their ability to detect They shorten the downtime, they increase the profitability, the quality of the product is better. That's the work that we do. That's inspiring. Now, you as a member of the ecosystem, you can choose not to be part of that, and that's absolutely fine. But if you share that passion for the customer, we are the type of company that will welcome you to create more value, services, support, and help the customer really achieve those outcomes in a world-class way.

Christophe Bertrand

>> So one of the outcomes I have to believe is in this day and age of AI is trusted access. You used the word, both of you used the word trust multiple times. So is trusted access to data something that can be achieved truly today with your partnership? What have you done to maybe co-engineer, to validate, to get to that point where as an enterprise customer, maybe a joint customer of both companies, I can say, well, I am— this is really the way to go. I'm going to be able to sleep better at night with this. Maybe we'll start with you, James, and then I'd like to get both your opinions.

James Cole

>> So, at Cisco, we have a huge security portfolio because we do believe that, protecting the data, protecting access to the data and protecting access to the infrastructure is really going to be key. And if you go forward to agentic AI where you have agents transacting on your behalf, it's the principles of identity for a human need to come to those agents in order to make sure that it's done in a secure way. So I think security and trust are the currency that move AI forward, right? So we've developed a whole portfolio. We have security built into our network switches. We have it built into our server products. And then we have products that can go on top of other infrastructure. It's a huge bet for us because we believe it really is a differentiator that will be the difference between maximizing AI versus having to hold back on something because you don't trust it for whatever level at whatever layer. So security is paramount.

Christophe Bertrand

>> And also same question to you.

Alvaro Celis

>> Yeah, look, we share the same values, the same passion for the customer. So you're going to have a very similar answer, which is awesome. In our case, when you look at the NetApp platform, security is built in Not bolt-on. It's designed into the platform as part of the way that you need to treat your data. It's as important as having your data ready. It's as important as being accessible and as important as being able to be governed. It is one of the four core tenets of that. Now, when you have this in your platform, then the question is how do we scale this? Because you have a value proposition for NetApp, you have a value proposition for Cisco. That's when the validated designs, the shared ecosystem give you a new layer of ability to then add not only product, but then services either managed or simply services from the partner and maybe other third-party solutions that you need to integrate to serve the customer better depending on the industry, depending on their needs.

Rebecca Knight

>> As we're wrapping up this conversation, I want you to both look into your crystal balls a little bit and tell me what we're going to be talking about at Insight 2027 and what perhaps for both of you who came out of retirement for this, what success would look like for you within a year from now, say an achievable, attainable goal that you think, okay, I think I can do that in 12 months. Alvaro, let's start with you.

Alvaro Celis

>> Oh, look, that's so enticing. Look, I'm a dreamer, so I want to tell you what I committed to my board when I took this job. I told them, you can hold me accountable for three things. We should be able to work with our ecosystem partners to earn more customer trust and preference. I should be able to sit down with our ecosystem and help us scale innovation, bring our inventions to market combined with what they do and create an amplification of value for customers. And if we do this right, that should imply healthier growth for the company so we can invest more on that innovation, on that trust, and create a positive spiral. My aspiration is to be sure that we can partner across the industry and be sure that we have the right partnership with the right offering at the right time for every customer so they can achieve their business outcomes. And we become that company. We— I believe that the NetApp platform is the first step. It's going to be an incredible journey. I think that we have an incredible lineup of things that we want to do together, especially on FlexPod, FlexPod AI, Security Fabric. There's a lot going on in the partnership that I don't think we're ready to announce right now, but it will be way more than one product set. It will be a whole portfolio. We have high aspirations and there are new companies that will join us. So it will be— we will make the family

Rebecca Knight

>> bigger.Expanding

Alvaro Celis

>> ecosystem.Yeah, we will be more hands in service of the customers. So it's really exciting what we have ahead.

Rebecca Knight

>> Yeah. James, final word.

James Cole

>> Yeah. From my perspective, I'll anchor on FlexPod and then kind of bring it forward, right? If I think about what FlexPod means today for our companies and AI infrastructure moving forward, it's almost two decades of us coming together to do a solution and in that almost two decades, we've learned, we've adjusted, we've grown, we've made it better. And now we're taking that two decades of experience and bringing it to bear in AI, which is the most transformative infrastructure event we've had in many, many decades. So I would like to take that foundation and then next year just see the Cisco portfolio, the NetApp portfolio, our joint solutions continue to advance in AI in a way that's going to grow the market, grow the outcomes for businesses, grow the outcomes for individuals, and really just start making a difference at a positive level through what we can bring to bear jointly.

Rebecca Knight

>> Watch this space. I love it. James and Alvaro, thank you so much. Thank you.

James Cole

>> Thanks for your time.

Alvaro Celis

>> Thank you so much.

James Cole

>> Thank you.

Rebecca Knight

>> I'm Rebecca Knight for Christophe Bertrand. Stay tuned for more of theCUBE's live coverage of NetApp Insight. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in enterprise tech news, and analysis.