NAND Research

Insights & Intelligence for the
Enterprise Infrastructure Market

Research & Advisory Services

Product Strategy

NAND Research works with technology companies across the enterprise IT infrastructure space, including tier-one OEMs, ISVs, and semiconductor manufacturers to help align product strategy with market needs. 

Competitive Insights

As industry analysts, understanding market dynamics is what NAND Research does best. 

NAND Research provides competitive intelligence services to select customers in the enterprise infrastructure space. 

Technology Trends &
Market Intelligence

The IT infrastructure market is in a state of constant churn. Our analysts are in the midst of it all, advising investors, technology companies and IT organizations alike.

Messaging Strategy &
Amplification

NAND Research works with leading technology companies in designing effective framework for talking about products, services, and innovation.

NAND leverages its multiple messaging channels to amplify your message and drive engagement.

Content Development

A messaging framework is only as good as its content. 

NAND Research works with technology companies across the spectrum to put together the content that best tells your story, whether that’s a webinar, white-paper, podcast, video, or something entirely different

IT Insights & Advisory

The NAND Research IT Advisory Council delivers benefit to technology companies and IT organizations alike: 

We help technology companies better understand the needs of IT organizations across industries, while helping enterprise IT organizations navigate a rapidly shifting technology landscape. 

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Latest Research

Research Notes

Research Note: Microsoft Azure Maia 200 Inference Accelerator

Microsoft recently announced its second-generation custom AI accelerator, the Maia 200. The new chip is an inference-optimized alternative to third-party GPUs in its Azure infrastructure. The company says the accelerator delivers 30% better performance per dollar than existing Azure hardware while supporting OpenAI’s GPT-5.2 models and Microsoft’s own synthetic data generation workloads.

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Steve McDowell February 9, 2026

Research Note: WD Innovation Day

Western Digital’s February 2026 Innovation Day showed a company fundamentally transformed from its legacy PC-centric storage roots into a critical AI infrastructure provider. The presentations unveiled breakthrough innovations that challenge long-held assumptions about hard drive technology limits.

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Steve McDowell February 9, 2026

Research Note: Veeam Acquires Object First, Consolidating Its Backup Appliance Strategy

Veeam recently confirmed its acquisition earlier this month of Object First, an immutable backup storage appliance vendor founded by Veeam’s original co-founders Ratmir Timashev and Andrei Baronov in 2022.

The transaction resolves a strategic conflict where Veeam competed directly with Object First’s Ootbi appliance while simultaneously offering its own Veeam Software Appliance for backup storage. The acquisition provides Veeam with purpose-built hardware capabilities to complement its software-first strategy.

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Steve McDowell January 31, 2026
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Research Reports

Research Report: Cisco FlashStack with Nutanix

January 13, 2026

The enterprise infrastructure market is faced with disruption across multiple fronts. Traditional virtualization platforms face unprecedented disruption, while emerging AI-first workloads demand architectures that seamlessly span on-prem, cloud, and edge environments.

It’s against this backdrop that Nutanix, Cisco, and Pure Storage have collaborated to reimagine converged infrastructure with Cisco’s FlashStack with Nutanix.

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Research Brief: Oracle Database 26ai Delivers Fully Integrated AI

November 5, 2025

Oracle released its Oracle Database 26ai at its recent AI World event in Las Vegas. The update makes the database an integrated platform that embeds artificial intelligence capabilities across data management, development, and analytics operations.

The platform integrates vector search capabilities with traditional database functions, supports agentic AI workflows through in-database tools and MCP servers, and extends analytics capabilities through Iceberg table format support. Oracle also bundles in advanced AI features, including AI Vector Search, at no additional cost.

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Research Brief: Cisco Partner Summit Infrastructure Announcements

November 4, 2025

At its 2025 Partner Summit in San Diego this week, Cisco announced three interconnected infrastructure initiatives to address the operational, connectivity, and edge-computing requirements of AI workloads.

The announcements span network management simplification through AgenticOps workflows, GPU-as-a-Service connectivity via SD-WAN integration with Megaport AI Exchange, and a new converged edge computing platform called Unified Edge.

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Research Report: Beyond Legacy Virtualization: Wind River’s Modern Alternative for Enterprise Infrastructure

October 31, 2025

Wind River Cloud Platform emerges as a compelling enterprise-grade alternative that addresses both immediate VMware challenges and long-term infrastructure modernization needs. Built on proven open-source technologies including StarlingX, Kubernetes, and OpenStack, the platform delivers unified management of both virtual machines and containers under a single, highly automated infrastructure solution.

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Research Report: Addressing Enterprise AI Data Challenges At Scale with the Dell AI Data Platform

October 31, 2025

This Research Report looks at how the Dell AI Data Platform addresses the challenges of AI-at-Scale with a purpose-built, modular approach that integrates file, block, and object storage into a unified system optimized for AI. Key components include data engines that enable aggregation, in-place querying, and searching across both structured and unstructured data sets, as well as storage engines that provide the necessary performance, scale, and security across on-premises, edge, and cloud environments.

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Research Brief: Oracle Autonomous AI Lakehouse

October 29, 2025

Oracle recently announced its Oracle Autonomous AI at its Oracle AI World event in Las Vegas. The new offering combines Oracle’s Autonomous AI Database platform with native Apache Iceberg support. The offering addresses persistent enterprise challenges around data lock-in and platform interoperability by providing standardized access to data across multiple clouds and catalogs.

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Blog

AI + Digital Transformation
Steve McDowell

“Chips” is now the “C” in CES

While the focus of CES 2026 remained on consumer electronics, this year felt different. More expansive, with the semiconductor industry dominating the pre-show with overlapping announcements that reveal diverging strategies for AI workload acceleration, manufacturing sovereignty, and market expansion beyond traditional computing segments.

Read More »
Steve McDowell January 13, 2026
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