2023: What a year for AI! It’s just getting started.
The field of artificial intelligence was created was born in 1956 by a professor at Dartmouth University, John McCarthy. For almost 70 years AI has struggled to find broad application or even interest from the public outside of sci-fi movies and comic books. That is until 2023. With the emergence of ChatGPT and generative AI or GenAI, 2023 became the turning point for AI adoption as the common user, and especially corporate customers, discovered the potential for AI to dramatically increase user productivity and accelerate innovation.
In fact, the market potential for AI is so big, that some have described it as the greatest leap in technology that we may have ever seen. According to a McKinsey report in 2023, GenAI alone is expected to contribute as much as $4.4 trillion annually to the global economy (Source: “Economic potential of generative AI”, McKinsey, June 2023). The potential is massive for the use of AI in all industries.
Challenges
However, many customers still express uncertainty about how best to manage AI workflows. Data is everywhere, on-premises and in the cloud, which is challenging since AI applications are very data hungry and GPUs are scarce. Meanwhile, sensitive, or proprietary data must be used responsibly to comply with regulations or to avoid unwanted exposure of IP (Intellectual Property). Effective data management is needed to concentrate data sources to best use and secure data and to streamline AI workflows.
The potential benefit of AI is motivating massive investment in innovative technologies and startups. Navigating which technologies to deploy can be challenging. Many storage startups are introducing special purpose storage offerings that will present future data silos which result in inefficiencies across the data pipeline. For most applications, a hybrid cloud workflow will be used to take advantage of the software advances in the cloud and to increase access to high performance GPUs. Optimization of AI applications will shift to on-premises infrastructures, and this cycle will repeat itself. Successful operations of AI workflows require an intelligent data infrastructure and effective management tools.
As with the emergence of modern technologies, users are often ahead of regulatory bodies. And criminals seize opportunities to use this same technology to outsmart defenses. Data governance and security represent some of the greatest concerns facing users of AI. It is critical to comply with existing and emerging regulatory requirements while also protecting against cyber-attacks. Improper exposure of personal information is a huge risk. And the negative impact on training data and models by bad actors can present significant risks. Proper data governance and expert cyber resilience technologies and expertise are a must have to be successful with AI.
What our customers are asking for
NetApp customers are encountering these challenges and asking the question: how can I best serve AI workflows, and what part does my infrastructure strategy play?
NetApp are data experts, at least in terms of how to store, copy, move, and protect data across a hybrid cloud workflow. We have over 3 decades of experience managing and protecting the most critical data and simplify management across the leading clouds and your data centers or colo-facilities. We have done the hard work of partnering with the leading AI technology companies, like NVIDIA, to bring solutions to market that ease deployment, increase productivity, and enhance security.
A NetApp intelligent data infrastructure built on a unified storage architecture delivers massive benefits, including outstanding performance, not for just modeling, but also to streamline the AI workflow. It also offers intelligence and integration with leading MLOps platforms, like Domino, with the industry’s best security for your data sets and models.
Conclusion
AI is a new frontier for most organizations. However, the applications and data requirements represent familiar I/O patterns and require intelligent data management and effective data security. NetApp offers the portfolio of solutions needed to accelerate AI adoption within your organization, across the entire AI pipeline, not just a part of it, wherever your data lives.
With NetApp, you get the performance you need, with the ability to fully saturate your high value GPUs and AI infrastructure with data, all served from a unified pool of data, not a separate silo. You also get all the enterprise storage capabilities and security you need that alternative storage vendors just do not offer. And you get this in the datacenter, and in the largest clouds.
Check out the following blogs for more information. Or click on the following link to contact a NetApp representative.
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