NetApp has unveiled visionary new products strengthening its enterprise-grade data platform for AI innovation. As the era of AI shifts from initial pilots to mission-critical agentic applications, AI-ready data on modern enterprise-grade data infrastructure delivers the results needed for AI-driven businesses.
NetApp’s new exabyte-scale AFX systems come with disaggregated storage and AI Data Engine built with NVIDIA deliver on AI vision. NetApp’s AI Data Engine is an add-on to ONTAP that works with NVIDIA’s AI Data Platform design.
It brings high-performance storage and smart data services under one secure control panel, so teams can move, prepare, and protect data for AI, covering training, AI search (RAG), and inference, across on-prem and public clouds. Customers can get it through a direct purchase or via a NetApp Keystone STaaS subscription. Paired with NetApp AFX, it makes data on the NetApp platform AI-ready as soon as it’s stored.
“Across Saudi Arabia and the UAE, AI has moved from ambition to execution, fueling national visions and reshaping entire industries,” said Suhail Hasanian, Senior Director, and General Manager, MEA, NetApp. “NetApp is proud to be at the heart of this transformation, helping organizations unlock the true value of their data across hybrid multicloud environments. Through our partnership with NVIDIA, we are enabling enterprises and government entities to accelerate AI adoption through an integrated data foundation that unites compute, software, and storage. Together, we are empowering the region’s visionaries to build a smarter, data-driven future.”
To accelerate modern AI workloads, NetApp introduced new capabilities including:
NetApp AFX – an enterprise-grade disaggregated all-flash storage system built for demanding AI workloads. NetApp AFX is a powerhouse data foundation for AI factories. It is certified storage for NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD supercomputing and powered by NetApp ONTAP, the industry-leading storage operating system trusted by tens of thousands of enterprise customers across industries to manage exabytes of data.
NetApp AI Data Engine (AIDE) – a comprehensive AI data service designed to make AI simple, affordable, and secure. From data ingestion and preparation to serving GenAI applications, AIDE offers a global, up-to-date view of a customer’s entire NetApp data estate for fast searching and curation while seamlessly connecting their data to any model or tool across on-premises and public cloud. It automates data change detection and data synchronization, eliminating redundant copies and ensuring data is always current. Built-in guardrails follow data throughout its AI lifecycle, ensuring security and privacy. AIDE leverages the NVIDIA AI Data Platform reference design—featuring NVIDIA accelerated computing and NVIDIA AI Enterprise software including NVIDIA NIM microservices—for vectorization and retrieval, which joins advanced compression, fast semantic discovery, and secure, policy-driven workflows. NetApp AIDE accelerates customers’ AI journeys with simplicity, security, and efficiency.
“Enterprises are looking for a trusted, high-performance data foundation to turn massive volumes of information into real intelligence that powers their AI journey,” said Justin Boitano, Vice President, Enterprise AI Products at NVIDIA. “NetApp’s data platform has transformed into an AI-native storage platform by integrating NVIDIA accelerated computing and software, including leading AI models. With this new platform, organizations can index and search vast amounts of unstructured data across their enterprise to drive innovation and deliver real business impact.”
As organizations in the Middle East scale AI from pilots to production, they are prioritizing secure data management, integration with current infrastructures, skills enablement, and measurable ROI. The solutions announced here are designed to support those priorities without lock-in and with deployment flexibility across on-premises and public cloud. In parallel, during GITEX 2025, NetApp MEA, together with NVIDIA, convened a C-suite roundtable with leaders from government and key verticals to discuss Delivering UAE’s AI Strategy 2031 with NetApp, how AI success starts with NetApp Intelligent Data Infrastructure, and how NVIDIA and NetApp work better together to accelerate AI adoption.
