Research Note: CrowdStrike Falcon Privileged Access
CrowdStrike recently introduced Falcon Privileged Access, a new component of its Falcon Identity Protection portfolio that adopts a just-in-time access model for privileged access management.
CrowdStrike also announced complementary capabilities, including integration between Falcon Identity Protection and Falcon Next-Gen SIEM, Charlotte AI Detection Triage for identity-based attacks, and new CrowdStrike Pulse Services for security maturity improvement.
Research Note: Hitachi Vantara’s CyberSense Integration
Hitachi Vantara is partnering with Index Engines to integrate CyberSense, an AI-powered ransomware detection solution, into its Virtual Storage Platform One (VSP One). With this move, Hitachi joins Dell, IBM, and Infinidat as the fourth OEM to adopt Index Engines’ technology.
Research Note: IBM Updates Concert Platform
IBM has introduced three significant updates to its IBM Concert platform, extending its capabilities in resilience management and hybrid infrastructure support. These updates allow IT organizations to shift operations from reactive to proactive posture by applying AI and workflow automation across observability, remediation, and mainframe operations.
Research Note: VMware Tanzu’s AI Makeover
Broadcom’s VMware is repositioning Tanzu from a Kubernetes-centric application platform to a GenAI-first PaaS. The latest release introduces support for Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) for agentic AI, deepens integration with the Claude LLM, and introduces a rearchitected platform focused on private cloud AI workloads.
Research Note: Fortanix Armet AI Public Preview
Fortanix recently launched a public preview of Armet AI, a turnkey generative AI platform that integrates confidential computing and enterprise-grade data governance.
Targeted at enterprises managing sensitive or regulated data, Armet AI addresses the challenges of building secure and compliant generative AI systems by combining Intel’s trusted execution environments (SGX, TDX) with fine-grained access control, policy enforcement, and AI-specific security mechanisms.
Research Note: NetApp Updates Google NetApp Cloud Volumes
At the recent Google Cloud Next event, NetApp and Google Cloud announced enhancements to Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, their fully managed file storage service. The updates focus on increasing scalability, performance, and integration capabilities while reducing complexity for enterprise workloads.
Key improvements include throughput increases to 30GiBps for Premium and Extreme service levels, independent scaling of capacity and performance for the Flex service level, integration with Google Cloud’s Vertex AI Platform, and support for Google Cloud Assured Workloads.
Research Note: Azure NetApp Files Enhancements
NetApp recently announced enhancements to their Azure NetApp Files (ANF) offering, introducing a new Flexible service level along with new capabilities to provide greater control over storage resources.
Quick Take: Databricks Acquires Fennel
Databricks announced the acquisition of Fennel, a specialized platform focused on feature engineering for machine learning applications. This acquisition bolsters Databricks’ capabilities in feature engineering, especially for real-time and streaming data applications.
Research Note: UALink Consortium Releases UALink 1.0
The UALink Consortium recently released its Ultra Accelerator Link (UALink) 1.0 specification. This industry-backed standard challenges the dominance of NVIDIA’s proprietary NVLink/NVSwitch memory fabric with an open alternative for high-performance accelerator interconnect technology.
Research Note: Hammerspace $100M Series B to Accelerate AI Infrastructure Growth
Hammerspace, which provides a high-performance data orchestration solution for AI and hybrid cloud environments, announced it’s raised $100 million in a Series B funding round.
The round, led by Altimeter Capital and including participation from ARK Invest and other strategic investors, values Hammerspace at more than $500 million.
Research Note: Dynatrace & AWS New Strategic Collaboration
Dynatrace and AWS announced a multi-year strategic collaboration agreement, deepening their decade-long partnership that began in 2014. This expanded collaboration aims to address enterprise challenges in digital transformation through enhanced AI-powered observability and security solutions.
OFC 2025: Optical Interconnects Take Center Stage in the AI-First Data Center
AI is reshaping the data center, bringing networking along for the ride. It’s clear that optical networking is rapidly moving from a back-end concern to a front-line enabler of next-generation infrastructure.
AI workloads, with their massive datasets, distributed training pipelines, and high-performance compute requirements, demand interconnect solutions that combine extreme bandwidth with low power consumption and low latency. At last month’s OFC 2025 event in San Francisco, this shift was unmistakable.
Key Takeaways: Microsoft FabCon 2025
At Microsoft’s second annual Fabric Community Conference (FabCon) 2025, held earlier this month in Las Vegas, the company unveiled several significant announcements that together enhance its unified data platform. The updates to Fabric focus on improving data security, AI integration, and streamlined data management.
Research Note: HPE Updates Aruba Networking Central
Hewlett Packard Enterprise recently announced significant enhancements to its HPE Aruba Networking Central platform, which expand its deployment options and strengthen AI and analytics capabilities. The platform now supports four distinct deployment models: public cloud SaaS, virtual private cloud, on-premises, and network-as-a-service.
Research Note: Cohesity’s Updates Cyber-Resilience for Google Cloud
At Google Cloud Next 2025, Cohesity announced several enhancements to its cyber resilience portfolio that provide deeper integrations with Google Cloud’s security capabilities. The announcements focus on AI-driven threat intelligence, incident response, secure recovery environments, and operational integration with Google Security Operations.
Research Note: Rubrik Expands Annapurna to GCP
At Google Cloud Next 2025, Rubrik announced the expansion of Rubrik Annapurna, its API-driven AI data security and governance platform, to Google Cloud. The announcement sees Rubrik delivering Annapurna as a secure data access layer for AI-driven application development within Google’s Agentspace framework.
Research Note: Anthropic/Databricks Partnership
Anthropic recently announced a new five-year strategic partnership with Databricks to integrate its Claude language models, including the newly released Claude 3.7 Sonnet, into the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform.
The deal, valued at approximately $100 million, will allow Databricks’ enterprise customers to build, deploy, and govern AI agents that operate directly on their proprietary enterprise data. Databricks will offer Claude models natively through its platform across AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.
Research Note: Infineon Acquires Marvell’s Auto Ethernet Business
Infineon Technologies announced its intention to acquire Marvell Technology’s Automotive Ethernet business for $2.5 billion in cash in a move that expands its microcontroller and automotive systems portfolio.
Research Note: IBM QisKit 2.0
IBM recently released Qiskit SDK v2.0, a major update to its open-source quantum software development kit. The new release is a key element of IBM’s long-term strategy to support utility-scale quantum computing by delivering architectural improvements, higher performance, and expanded interoperability with classical HPC systems.
Dryad Networks: Using LoRaWAN to Protect Forests and Promote Sustainability
Dryad Networks is making waves in the growing realm of environmental technology with its innovative use of LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network). Self-described as an “impact for profit” company, Dryad is on a mission to deploy ultra-early fire detection and environmental monitoring systems into remote, densely forested regions throughout the world.
Research Note: Dell’s Data Protection & Storage Updates
Dell Technologies this week announced a comprehensive set of updates spanning its data protection and storage platforms, including PowerProtect Data Domain, PowerProtect Data Manager, PowerScale, and PowerStore.
Research Note: Enhanced Google Cloud NetApp Volumes
At the 2025 Google Cloud Next event, NetApp and Google Cloud announced a significant expansion of capabilities for Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, their jointly developed fully managed file storage offering.
The updates provide enhance performance, scalability, and integration with AI and compliance frameworks, targeting large-scale enterprise workloads
NAND Insider Newsletter: April 6 2025
Each week NAND Research puts out a newsletter for our industry customers taking a look at what’s driving the week, and what happened last week that caught our attention. Below is a excerpt from this week’s, April 6, 2025.
Quick Take: IBM Acquires Hakkoda, Expands Consulting Reach
IBM has announced its acquisition of Hakkoda, a New York-based data and AI consultancy, as part of its strategy to expand its consulting services, particularly in the financial services, public sector, and healthcare and life sciences industries.
Research Note: OpenText Titanium X in CE 25.2
OpenText recently launched Titanium X, part of its Cloud Editions (CE) 25.2 release, its most comprehensive AI-native upgrade across all major product clouds. The release introduces new AI agents, expanded automation capabilities, and integrated cloud security enhancements.
Quick Take: Qualcomm Acquires VinAI’s MovianAI Division
Qualcomm last week announced its acquisition of MovianAI, the generative AI division of VinAI, a leading Vietnamese AI research firm within the Vingroup ecosystem. The acquisition will enhance Qualcomm’s generative AI R&D capabilities by bringing VinAI’s deep expertise in AI, machine learning, computer vision, and natural language processing to its already-strong arsenal.
Research Note: Portworx Enhanced Kubernetes VM Support
At this week’s Kubecon event, Portworx announced significant updates to its Enterprise 3.3 and Portworx Backup solutions, focused on enabling virtualization administrators to run virtual machines natively in Kubernetes environments.
NAND Insider Newsletter: March 30 2025
Every week NAND Research puts out a newsletter for our industry customers taking a look at what’s driving the week, and what happened last week that caught our attention. Below is a excerpt from this week’s, March 30, 2025.