Building Bridges: Why Industry Understanding is Key to System Integrator Trust
To truly earn the trust of enterprise customers, system integrators must expand their value proposition. It’s no longer enough to just present a strong technology component.
Don’t Get Lost in the Noise: Crafting a Private 5G RFP That Delivers Results
Investing the time to create a solid unambiguous Private 5G RFP ensures you select a solution that truly aligns with your strategic objectives.
Why Independent Advisory Matters: Navigating Private 5G Vendor Noise in a Complex Industrial Landscape
In today’s fast-paced technological world, making smart, strategic decisions about new tech isn’t just important—it’s absolutely critical. Every day, companies are bombarded with pitches, white papers (guilty!), and webinars from countless vendors, each promising their solution is the silver bullet. It’s what I like to call “vendor noise,” and it can be deafening, especially when […]
Research Note: FortiGate 700G Series for the Modern Campus
Executive Summary Fortinet’s recent introduction of the FortiGate 700G series marks a significant advancement in Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) technology, purpose-built to address the evolving security and networking demands of today’s complex campus environments. This new series leverages Fortinet’s proprietary ASIC technology and unified operating system, FortiOS, to deliver exceptional performance, advanced threat protection, and energy […]
HPE + Juniper: The Green Light for an AI-Powered Networking Future
Well, folks, it’s official! After what was a long and winding road through regulatory hurdles, the U.S. Department of Justice has finally given the nod to Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) whopping $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks. This isn’t just any tech merger; it’s a monumental move that’s set to shake up the enterprise networking […]
Research Note: HPE GreenLake Intelligence
At the recent HPE Discover event, HPE introduced GreenLake Intelligence, an agentic AI framework that attempts to address the operational complexity of modern hybrid IT environments through autonomous agent orchestration.The platform combines domain-specific large language models with real-time telemetry from HPE’s infrastructure portfolio, enabling proactive, cross-domain IT operations management.
Research Note: HPE’s Updated AI Factory
At its recent Discover event, HPE announced an expansion of its NVIDIA-based AI Computing portfolio with three distinct AI factory configurations targeting enterprise, service provider, and sovereign deployment scenarios.The offerings center on the upgraded HPE Private Cloud AI platform, which integrates NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs with HPE ProLiant Gen12 servers, custom storage solutions, and orchestration software.
HPE Discover 2025: The AI Evolution Takes Center Stage (and Everywhere Else) Day 1 Wrap Up
Las Vegas, Nevada – Antonio Neri took the stage at HPE Discover 2025’s opening day keynote, captivating a massive audience at the iconic Sphere in Las Vegas. Thousands of excited attendees filled the unique venue, buzzing with anticipation to hear HPE’s vision and groundbreaking announcements for the future of AI, hybrid cloud, and networking. The […]
Research Note: Pure Storage’s New Enterprise Data Cloud
At its recent Pure //Accelerate event, Pure Storage introduced its new Enterprise Data Cloud (EDC) architecture, positioning the concept as a unified data management platform that consolidates storage operations across hybrid environments.
The EDC centers on Pure Fusion, the company’s storage orchestration layer, with new automation capabilities, including workload presets, workflow orchestration, and enhanced security integrations.
Research Brief: WEKA NeuralMesh, a Micro-Services-based AI Data Architecture
WEKA recently announced NeuralMesh, its software-defined, microservices-based storage platform engineered for high-performance, distributed AI workloads. NeuralMesh introduces a dynamic mesh architecture that departs from traditional monolithic or appliance-bound storage systems.
It addresses the requirements of emerging AI applications, including agentic AI, large-scale inference, and token warehouse infrastructure, by delivering consistent microsecond-level latency, fault isolation, and scale-out performance across hybrid environments.
Research Note: Meter NaaS
Meter, a networking company founded in 2015, stands out in the networking world by offering a complete, integrated approach to Networking-as-a-Service (NaaS). They combine their own hardware, software, deployment, and ongoing operations into a single, straightforward subscription. This setup differs from traditional networking models and many other NaaS options, which often focus just on management […]
Research Note: Snowflake Evolves into AI Platform at Summit 2025
Snowflake recently held its annual Snowflake Summit in San Francisco where the announcements show the company evolving from a data warehouse provider to an AI platform orchestrator. The announcements address three core enterprise challenges: democratizing data access beyond technical teams, accelerating AI development workflows, and reducing data integration overhead.
Research Note: Broadcom Releases VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0
Broadcom has announced the general availability of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0, a major release that advances its unified private cloud platform across on-premises, edge, and managed service provider environments.
This release consolidates infrastructure management and developer operations into a single interface while integrating support for AI workloads, modern applications, and advanced cost transparency and security features.
Research Note: AMD Raises its Game at its Advancing AI 2025 Event
AMD announced a comprehensive portfolio of AI infrastructure solutions at its recent Advancing AI 2025 event, positioning itself as a full-stack competitor to NVIDIA.
The announcements include the immediate availability of MI350 Series GPUs with 4x generational performance improvements, the ROCm 7.0 software platform achieving 3.5x gains in inference, and the AMD Developer Cloud for broader ecosystem access.
AMD also previewed its 2026 “Helios” rack solution, which integrates MI400 GPUs, EPYC “Venice” CPUs, and Pensando “Vulcano” NICs.
Research Note: Cisco Introduces AI Canvas
Earlier this week at Cisco Live San Diego 2025, Cisco unveiled AI Canvas, a groundbreaking Generative UI designed to redefine IT operations. This initiative is a core component of Cisco’s broader AgenticOps strategy, aiming to infuse AI agents directly into network management. AI Canvas targets the increasing complexity of modern IT environments, particularly with the […]
Cisco Live Day 1 Recap
San Diego- the sun’s shining, the breeze is cool, and Cisco Live! 2025 just kicked off, bringing all sorts of cool vibes and as expected, a boatload of announcements. But here’s the real talk: Cisco has come to play with their AI powered networking gear.
Research Note: VDURA Data Platform 11.2
Earlier this month, VDURA announced Version 11.2 of its Data Platform, featuring native Kubernetes CSI support, end-to-end encryption, and the VDURACare Premier support package.
The release also includes a technology preview of V-ScaleFlow, a data movement capability that VDURA claims will reduce flash requirements by over 50% through intelligent tiering between QLC flash and high-capacity HDDs.
The Unsung Hero: How Edge AI and ZTNA are Transforming Industrial IoT Connectivity
As the number of connected devices explodes on sprawling factory floors, in remote oil & gas fields, and across utility grids, the dual challenge of handling massive data volumes and securing vulnerable endpoints becomes paramount.
The solution lies not just in more bandwidth but in the synergy of Edge AI and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA).
Research Note: Snowflake’s Crunchy Data Acquisition
At its annual Snowflake Summit in San Francisco, Snowflake announced its intent to acquire Crunchy Data for approximately $250 million. The deal brings enterprise-grade PostgreSQL capabilities into Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud through a new offering called Snowflake Postgres. This acquisition addresses a critical gap in Snowflake’s platform, while intensifying competition with Databricks for dominance in AI infrastructure.
HPE Aruba Networking Levels Up for the AI Age
Big news from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)! Its Aruba Networking crew just dropped some major upgrades for both wired and wireless networks. The goal? To tackle the huge demands of AI, IoT, and other super-fast apps, proving HPE’s serious about keeping businesses ahead of the game.
Quick Take: Dell Tech World 2025
Last week I was back in Las Vegas for Dell Technologies World 2025. The company has a broad portfolio but was telling a single-minded story: Dell has a relentless focus on AI, emphasizing the Dell AI Factory and the shift towards on-premises enterprise AI solutions.
DataCore Acquires StarWind, Expands HCI Capabilities from Core to Edge
DataCore Software, a long-time player in software-defined storage (SDS) and data infrastructure, announced the acquisition of StarWind Software, a hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) vendor best known for serving edge and ROBO environments
Arista Eyes VeloCloud: A Strategic Move in the Networking Game?
The SDWAN world is buzzing with reports suggesting that Arista Networks is set to acquire VeloCloud, Broadcom’s software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) business. While no official announcement confirming the deal has been made, the potential acquisition has sparked considerable discussion about the strategic implications for both companies and the broader networking market.
Research Note: HPE’s New Storage SLAs and Edge-Ready Backup Appliances
HPE recently introduced new service-level guarantees and product innovations focused on cyber resilience, energy efficiency, and zero data loss for its flagship HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 platform.
It also expanded its StoreOnce data protection portfolio with new appliances tailored to remote offices and SMBs.
Research Note: RUCKUS Networks Introduces AI-Driven Wi-Fi 7 Outdoor Access Point
RUCKUS Networks recently expanded its portfolio by introducing the RUCKUS T670 and T670sn outdoor Wi-Fi 7 access points. This announcement is a significant step in bringing the latest Wi-Fi standards and AI capabilities to challenging outdoor environments, focusing on high-density and performance needs.
NAND Insider Newsletter: Week of May 12, 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, May 10, 2025.
HPE Strengthens Cloud and Edge Security Posture
HPE rolled confidently into RSAC Conference recently, and, I must say, they brought some interesting tech to the table. HPE has been around the network security block a time or two. But these latest moves, especially around GreenLake and the Aruba Networking gear, show that they’re serious about stepping up their security game.
Research Note: Nutanix & Pure Storage Partnership
At the recent Nutanix .NEXT event, Pure Storage and Nutanix announced a collaboration to deliver a jointly certified solution combining Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure with Pure Storage FlashArray over NVMe/TCP.
The alliance targets enterprise customers seeking alternatives to traditional virtualization stacks, particularly VMware deployments.
Quick Take: UALink & OCP Join Forces
The Open Compute Project (OCP) Foundation and the Ultra Accelerator Link (UALink) Consortium have announced a strategic collaboration to standardize and deploy high-performance, open scale-up interconnects for next-generation AI and HPC clusters.
Research Note: IBM Orchestrate for Enterprise Agentic AI
At IBM Think 2025 in Boston, IBM announced its new watsonx Orchestrate, catching the shift that sees enterprise AI moving beyond simple model deployment toward agent orchestration.
The platform enables organizations to build, deploy, and manage AI agents across enterprise environments with minimal technical expertise required.
Research Note: CrowdStrike’s Falcon Adversary OverWatch
CrowdStrike expanded its threat-hunting capabilities, introducing its new Falcon Adversary OverWatch Next-Gen SIEM, extending visibility beyond endpoints to third-party data sources.
The new solution uses managed threat hunting to uncover threats in their early stages using available third-party SIEM data from network edge devices, identity and access management tools, SaaS applications, and email security tools.
NAND Insider Newsletter: Week of April 28, 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 28, 2025.
Research Note: IBM Autonomous Threat Operations Machine (ATOM) & Predictive Threat Intelligence
At RSAC 2025, IBM introduced new agentic AI capabilities to its managed security services portfolio, focusing on autonomous threat detection and response. The two key offerings are the Autonomous Threat Operations Machine (ATOM) and X-Force Predictive Threat Intelligence (PTI).
Research Note: Palo Alto Networks Prisma AIRS for AI Protection
At RSAC 2025, Palo Alto Networks launched its new Prisma AIRS (AI Security), a comprehensive security platform targeting threats across enterprise AI ecosystems. Building upon their “Secure AI by Design” portfolio introduced last year, Prisma AIRS addresses emerging security challenges posed by the proliferation of AI applications, agents, and models.
Quick Take: Palo Alto Networks to Acquire Protect AI
Today, Palo Alto Networks announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Protect AI, which secures AI and ML applications. The deal is part of Palo Alto Networks’ broader strategy to expand its cybersecurity portfolio into AI risk management.
Research Note: Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSIAM 3.0
Palo Alto Networks recently released Cortex XSIAM 3.0, expanding its security operations platform with proactive exposure management and advanced email security capabilities. The update shifts the platform’s focus from primarily reactive to proactive security measures.
Research Note: Veeam’s VeeamOn Announcements
At its annual VeeamON 2025 event, Veeam Software announced three significant expansions to its data resilience platform. The updates focus on identity protection, AI integration, and security partnerships.
Research Note: Atlassian Team ’25 Announcements
At Atlassian’s Team ’25 event in Anaheim, the company unveiled a comprehensive set of product updates that unify cross-functional collaboration, strategic execution, and service delivery capabilities under a single AI-enabled platform.
The key announcements focus on expanding the Rovo AI system, launching new strategic planning and workforce management tools, introducing a Customer Service Management solution, and bundling core collaboration tools into the new Teamwork Collection.
NAND Insider Newsletter: April 21 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 21, 2025.
Research Note: Scality-Veeam Unified Software Appliance
Scality and Veeam have developed a unified software appliance that runs on commodity x86 servers. It combines Scality’s ARTESCA object storage with Veeam’s Backup and replication software.
The new integration promises to streamline deployment, enhance security, and reduce implementation costs. It also eliminates the need for separate physical or virtual infrastructure for Veeam while providing a hardened security environment with reduced attack surface.
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.
Research Note: Siemens Acquires Altair Engineering
Siemens AG recently announced the acquisition of Altair Engineering, a leading provider of industrial simulation and HPC software, for an enterprise value of approximately $10 billion.
This is Siemens’ largest acquisition to date and expands the company’s industrial software portfolio with core technologies in mechanical and electromagnetic simulation, data science, AI, and HPC.
Research Note: Verizon Trusted Connection
Earlier this month at MWC 2025, Verizon Business announced the release of its new Verizon Trusted Connection, a Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) and Security Service Edge (SSE) platform that unifies secure connectivity and policy enforcement across enterprise devices, networks, and applications.
The new offering sees Verizon targeting midsize enterprises seeking to consolidate security and networking services under a single provider and management interface.
Research Note: Palo Alto Networks Prisma SASE for 5G
Earlier this month at MWC 2025, Palo Alto Networks announced the general availability of Prisma SASE 5G, its new cloud-delivered cybersecurity solution for enterprises leveraging 5G connectivity.
The offering expands the company’s SASE portfolio to provide integrated Zero Trust security for 5G-enabled infrastructure, including mobile users, IoT/OT devices, and SD-WAN endpoints.
Research Note: Lenovo AI Announcements @ GTC 2025
At NVIDIA GTC 2025, Lenovo showed off its latest Hybrid AI Factory platforms in partnership with NVIDIA, focused on agentic AI.
The Lenovo Hybrid AI Advantage framework integrates a full-stack hardware and software solution, optimized for both private and public AI model deployments, and spans on-prem, edge, and cloud environments.
NAND Insider Newsletter: March 24, 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 24, 2025.
Research Note: NetApp AI Data Announcements @ GTC 2025
At the recent GTC 2025 event, NetApp announced, in collaboration with NVIDIA, a comprehensive set of product validations, certifications, and architectural enhancements to its intelligent data products.
The announcements include NetApp’s integration with the NVIDIA AI Data Platform, support for NVIDIA’s latest accelerated computing systems, and expanded availability of enterprise-grade AI infrastructure offerings, including NetApp AFF A90 and NetApp AIPod.
Metadata: The Silent Bottleneck in AI Infrastructure
One of the most impactful but underappreciated architectural changes impacting storage performance for AI is how these solutions manage metadata. Separating metadata processing from data storage unlocks significant gains in performance, scalability, and efficiency across AI workloads. Let’s look at why metadata processing matters for AI.
Research Note: WEKA Augmented Memory Grid
At the recent NVIDIA GTC conference, WEKA announced the general availability of its Augmented Memory Grid, a software-defined storage extension engineered to mitigate the limitations of GPU memory during large-scale AI inferencing.
The Augmented Memory Grid is a new approach that integrates with the WEKA Data Platform and leverages NVIDIA Magnum IO GPUDirect Storage (GDS) to bypass CPU bottlenecks and deliver data directly to GPU memory with microsecond latency.
Research Note: IBM Content-Aware Storage for RAG AI Workflows
At the recent NVIDIA GTC event, IBM announced new content-aware capabilities for its Storage Scale platform, expanding its AI infrastructure offerings to support more efficient, semantically rich data access for enterprise AI applications.
Research Note: HPE’s New Full-Stack Enterprise AI Infrastructure Offerings
At the recent NVIDIA GTC 2025, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and NVIDIA jointly introduced NVIDIA AI Computing by HPE, full-stack AI infrastructure offerings targeting enterprise deployment of generative, agentic, and physical AI workloads.
The solutions span private cloud AI platforms, observability and management software, reference blueprints, AI development environments, and new AI-optimized servers featuring NVIDIA’s Blackwell architecture.
MWC 2025 Playbook: Enterprise IT’s Big AI & 5G Moment
If you blinked, you might have missed the tidal wave of AI, 5G, and cloud announcements at Mobile World Congress 2025. But don’t worry—we’ve got the cheat sheet.
Liquid Cooling is Front & Center at GTC 2025
One thing was clear at the just-wrapped NVIDIA GTC event: the race to cool the next generation of HPC and AI systems is intensifying.
Let’s take a quick look at some of our favorite announcements.
Research Note: NVIDIA AI Storage Certifications & AI Data Platform
At its annual GTC event in San Jose, NVIDIA announced an expansion of its NVIDIA-Certified Systems program, including the new NVIDIA AI Data Platform reference design, to include enterprise storage certification to help streamline AI factory deployments.
Research Note: HPE Storage Enhancements for AI
At NVIDIA GTC 2025, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced a slew of new storage capabilities, including a new unified data layer. These capabilities are designed to accelerate AI adoption by integrating structured and unstructured data across multi-vendor and multi-cloud environments.
NVIDIA GTC 2025: The Super Bowl of AI
If you thought AI was already moving fast, buckle up, Jensen Huang threw more fuel on the fire. NVIDIA’s GTC 2025 keynote wasn’t just about new GPUs; it was a full-scale vision of computing’s future, one where AI isn’t just a tool — it’s the foundation of everything.
Let’s look at what Jensen talk about during his 2+ hour keynote.
Quick Take: Google’s $32B Wiz Acquisition
Google today announced its intent to acquire cybersecurity start-up Wiz for a staggering $32 billion in an all-cash deal. This acquisition is one of the largest ever cybersecurity deals.
Research Note: Red Hat Releases OpenShift 4.18
Red Hat recently released OpenShift 4.18, bringing enhancements to the solution for networking, virtualization, security, and deployment flexibility.
Research Note: VDURA V5000 All-Flash AI Storage Appliance
VDURA recently announced its new V5000 All-Flash Appliance, a high-performance storage solution engineered for AI and high-performance computing workloads. The system integrates with the VDURA V11 Data Platform for a combination of high throughput, low-latency access, and seamless scalability.
Research Note: Pure Storage FlashBlade//EXA
Pure Storage recently announced the launch of its new FlashBlade//EXA, a high-performance storage platform designed for AI and HPC workloads. FlashBlade//EXA extends the company’s Purity operating environment and DirectFlash technology to provide extreme performance, scalability, and metadata management that addresses the increasing demands of AI-driven applications.
NAND Insider Newsletter: March 10, 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 10, 2025.
Research Note: Couchbase Edge Server for Offline-First Data Processing
Couchbase recently announced its new Couchbase Edge Server, a lightweight, offline-first database and sync solution designed for edge computing environments. The new solution extends Couchbase’s mobile data synchronization capabilities to resource-constrained deployments where full-scale database solutions are not feasible.
CoreWeave’s Wild Ride Towards IPO
CoreWeave, the AI-focused cloud provider that’s that was early in catching and riding the generative AI boom, is officially gunning for the big leagues. The NVIDIA-backed company has filed for an IPO, looking to capitalize on the insatiable demand for AI compute.
That’s big news for the AI infrastructure world, where CoreWeave has rapidly positioned itself as a major player, taking on the likes of Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.
But before you start picturing ringing bells on Wall Street and champagne toasts, there’s more to the story. A lot more.
Research Note: ServiceNow to Acquire Moveworks
ServiceNow has agreed to acquire Moveworks, an enterprise AI assistant and search technology provider. The cash-and-stock transaction, expected to close in the second half of 2025, is ServiceNow’s largest acquisition.
The acquisition strengthens ServiceNow’s agentic AI strategy and expands its capabilities in AI-driven enterprise automation, employee experience, and search.
Enterprise Infrastructure Tracker: March 2025
We’re barely two months into the new year and already the enterprise infrastructure market is heating up.
Here’s what caught our attention over the past month:
Research Note: IBM FlashSystem C200 High-Capacity Flash Archive
IBM recently announced its FlashSystem C200, a new storage platform integrating 46 TB QLC NAND drives to provide an archive tier within a FlashSystem grid. The C200 expands IBM’s FlashSystem portfolio with a high-density flash solution that competes with traditional nearline HDD storage.
IBM claims the C200 provides flash-like performance with QLC-level economics, enhanced endurance, and seamless grid integration.
March Survey Round-Up: AI is Booming, But Data Quality & Security Haunt Leaders
Who doesn’t love a good survey? We’ve combed through a bumper crop of new surveys on AI and tech trends for 2025 to find the bottom line: Executives can’t pump the brakes on AI spending — but lousy data, security holes, and an alarming skills gap could cause serious headaches.
Let’s look at what we’ve learned from February’s batch of surveys tell us about the state of enterprise IT.
March Cyber Tracker: AI, Partnerships, and the Future of Cyber Resilience
Cyber threats are evolving, and the industry is fighting back with AI-powered defenses, strategic alliances, and enhanced resilience measures. Here’s what we’ve seen over the past month that’s captured our attention:
Quick Take: NTT DATA & Palo Alto Networks Partner on Private 5G Security
NTT DATA recently announced a new managed security service powered by Palo Alto Networks. The service enhances security for industrial and operational technology (OT) environments by integrating Palo Alto Networks’ cybersecurity solutions with NTT DATA’s Private 5G architecture.
Research Note: Rubrik Expanded Cyber-Resilience Capabilities
Rubrik recently announced new cyber-resilience features to strengthen data protection across public cloud, SaaS, and on-premises environments. The latest enhancements focus on threat detection, data protection, identity recovery, and automated recovery processes to mitigate cyberattack risks.
Research Note: Check Point & Wiz Enter Strategic Partnership
Wiz and Check Point recently announced a strategic partnership to integrate cloud network security with cloud-native application protection. The collaboration will merge Check Point’s AI-driven cloud security and networking capabilities with Wiz’s Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP).
NAND Insider Newsletter: March 3, 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 3, 2025.
Research Note: NVIDIA & Cisco Partner on Spectrum-X
Cisco and NVIDIA announced an expanded partnership to unify AI data center networking by integrating Cisco Silicon One with NVIDIA Spectrum-X.
The companies will create a joint architecture that supports high-performance, low-latency AI workloads across enterprise and cloud environments.