A Strategic Perspective from Product Leadership at NetApp and Starburst Data
The enterprise AI revolution isn't waiting for anyone. As organizations rush to implement AI, with 87% planning deployments within 12 months, a harsh reality is emerging. Most AI projects will fail not due to inadequate AI models, but because of insufficient data infrastructure. The critical challenge most customers face is integrating their existing data, whether in the cloud, on-premises, or both, with their enterprise AI workflows. The strategic partnership between NetApp and Starburst Data represents a fundamental reimagining of how enterprises should architect for AI success.
The $100 Billion Question: Why Data Infrastructure Determines AI Success
Every large enterprise faces the same challenge. AI initiatives demand instant access to all data, everywhere, with zero compromise on governance or security. Traditional storage vendors have responded with incremental improvements. We've chosen to break the mold.
The Fatal Flaw in Current Approaches
Traditional storage vendors continue to treat storage as a passive repository, a place where data waits to be moved, processed, and returned. This outdated paradigm creates three critical failures:
- A Data Movement Tax: Every AI workflow requires multiple hops between storage and processing layers, introducing latency, cost, and complexity.
- Siloed Intelligence: Data remains trapped in infrastructure silos, preventing the holistic view AI requires.
- Static Architecture: Traditional storage can't adapt to AI's dynamic requirements for training, inference, and real-time processing.
Beyond Traditional Storage: The Intelligent Data Platform
The new design center in NetApp® ONTAP® is built on the tenets of disaggregation and composable architecture. This design center is ideally suited for workloads that require high bandwidth and scale and provides cost-effective scaling of data infrastructure for deep learning. NetApp's new disaggregated architecture includes an enhanced metadata management engine that helps customers understand all the data assets in their organization, enabling them to simplify AI training and fine- tuning. This new engine will automatically capture changes to your data, generate highly compressed vector embeddings, making that data available for searches and AI/RAG inferencing workloads that leverage generative AI technologies and large language models (LLMs). This shift holds several important implications. Let’s unpack them one by one.
- Data preparation and data management happen where data lives. This approach reduces the inefficiency of external processing
- AI workflows accelerate. This allows the value of AI to scale by orders of magnitude through in-platform optimization
- Governance remains intact. This means that, with Starburst Data’s hybrid data federation capabilities, data never leaves the secure perimeter, enabling in-place query execution without data movement.
The Starburst Multiplier Effect
Starburst's distributed and hybrid platform amplifies this vision by providing federated data access across all data sources, whether in NetApp ONTAP or StorageGRID, cloud object stores, or legacy databases, along with the ability to secure, govern, and maintain the compliance of the data with AI.
Together, we deliver:
- Single data access interface across petabytes of distributed and hybrid data for a unified data view. NetApp ONTAP unifies storage through a simplified, software-defined approach for secure and efficient data management. Customers can leverage ONTAP for NAS, SAN, and S3 object protocol, which enables effective use of cloud resources for improved performance and seamless scalability. Performant 50+ native connectors to every major enterprise data platform. NetApp ONTAP offers extended REST API capabilities enabling S3 object administration and AI service integration, which also includes enhanced OAuth 2.0 support.
- Ability to not only store but govern the data to enforce and maintain compliance across all data sources with AI. ONTAP includes several synchronous and asynchronous data protection and compliance policies that ensure client I/O is not disrupted across your AI workflow.
The NetApp-Starburst Advantage: Quantifiable Business Outcomes
The adoption of NetApp and Starburst together results in several advantages and quantifiable improvements in business outcomes. Let’s unpack them one by one.
- Accelerated AI Time-to-Value
Using NetApp and Starburst accelerates the time spent to achieve value when compared to traditional approaches. Consider the typical scenario listed below.
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Traditional Approach
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NetApp-Starburst Platform
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6-12 months to production
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6-8 weeks to production
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Multiple data movements
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Zero data movement
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5-7 tools required
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Single integrated platform
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Limited to structured data
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All data types supported
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- Dramatic Cost Reduction
Using NetApp and Starburst also results in a dramatic reduction in cost. The sample below shows a typical cost reduction using this strategy.
- 70% reduction in data preparation costs through in-platform processing
- 50% lower cloud egress fees via intelligent data placement
- 78% which is best in class storage efficiency
- Eliminated redundant infrastructure, recouping dollars for priority projects
- Enterprise-Grade AI Governance
NetApp and Starubrst offer rock-solid, enterprise-ready data governance. While competitors struggle with compliance, we are built to deliver a compliance-ready approach no matter where your data lives. This includes data on-premises, in the cloud, or a mix of both.
This results in:
- NSA-validated encryption, the only storage vendor to achieve this
- Immutable audit trails for regulatory compliance
- Unified access control across all data sources
- Real-time lineage tracking for AI model governance
Why NetApp and Starburst Help You to Act on AI Today
AI adoption is transforming the business landscape at every organization worldwide. Organizations that fail to modernize their data infrastructure today will find themselves permanently disadvantaged. As you decide how and when to adopt AI at your organization, there are several pathways to consider.
- Address the hurdle to AI implementation, adoption, and success: Data, data access, and governed data management are the foundation for AI project success.
- Compound Learning: Every day is a proverbial head start on your competitors.
- Convert on the AI productivity and cost premise: Successful AI projects drive organizational and business productivity and cost gains - every day.
NetApp + Starburst: Your Unfair Advantage
NetApp and Starburst are a perfect pairing. Together, they provide a complete transformation of your AI readiness that offers.
- The only platform with embedded data intelligence + cloud-neutral hybrid lakehouse, with federated access to all data and data management
- The only unified solution spanning all protocols, all clouds, all data types, without the need to move data
- The only partnership delivering true federated data intelligence at scale
The enterprise race to AI success will not be won by those with the largest models, but by those with the strongest data foundations. NetApp and Starburst together redefine what it means to be AI-ready. We unite intelligent storage, federated access, and governed data management into one cohesive ecosystem.
While traditional storage vendors remain trapped in legacy architectures, NetApp and Starburst are here to help you build an AI-ready, hybrid, future-proof data platform. This partnership transforms data from a static asset into an active enabler of insight, speed, and innovation. The enterprises that act now to modernize their data infrastructure will be the ones setting the pace in the AI-driven economy.
Because in the AI era, your data infrastructure isn't just supporting your business, it IS your business value.
