Microsoft has announced several new features for Azure NetApp Files (ANF). These updates bring meaningful improvements in performance, flexibility, security, and data mobility—making ANF an even more capable solution for organizations running demanding workloads in the cloud.   Whether you're managing infrastructure, supporting hybrid environments, or navigating compliance requirements, these enhancements are designed to help your organization operate more efficiently and securely.   Improved Data Mobility and Access Two powerful data mobility features are now available: Azure NetApp Files Cache Volumes Azure NetApp Files Migration Assistant Cache Volumes, built on NetApp’s ONTAP® FlexCache® technology, introduce a persistent, high-performance cache in Azure for origin volumes located outside ANF. This means active data can be accessed faster and more efficiently—even across WAN connections. For distributed teams or hybrid architectures, this capability enables low-latency access to critical files without duplicating entire datasets.   The Migration Assistant streamlines the process of moving data from on-premises ONTAP environments to Azure. It preserves metadata and minimizes downtime, helping your organization reduce migration complexity and network costs. Flexible Pricing and Performance Optimization   Three new features are now GA that give organizations more control over cost and performance: Flexible Service Level Flexible Service Level with Cool Access Short-Term Clones With flexible service levels, you can dynamically adjust performance tiers based on workload needs—scaling up for high-performance tasks or scaling down to save costs during quieter periods. The addition of cool access tiers allows you to store infrequently accessed data at a lower cost, while maintaining availability when needed.   Short-term clones are ideal for development, testing, and analytics. These space-efficient, temporary copies allow teams to work with production-like data without consuming large amounts of storage, accelerating innovation while keeping costs in check.   Simplified VMware Integration Azure NetApp Files now supports datastore integration with Azure VMware Solution (AVS) Generation 2, and notably, this no longer requires ExpressRoute.   This update simplifies deployment for organizations using AVS, making it easier to migrate VMware workloads to Azure. With ANF providing high-performance storage, teams can expect improved responsiveness and reliability for their virtualized environments—without the complexity of additional networking infrastructure.   Enhanced Security and Visibility Security and compliance are top priorities for many organizations, and ANF’s latest updates deliver greater control and transparency: Cross-Tenant Customer-Managed Keys for Volume Encryption File Access Logs With cross-tenant encryption, your organization can manage its own encryption keys—even in multi-tenant scenarios—ensuring data protection policies remain under your control. This is especially important for regulated industries or environments with strict governance requirements.   File Access Logs provide detailed visibility into file-level operations. These logs support audit trails, help detect unusual access patterns, and enable forensic analysis—making it easier to meet compliance standards and maintain operational integrity.   Who Benefits Most from These Updates? These new features are particularly valuable for: Organizations modernizing infrastructure or migrating to AVS The VMware integration and migration tools simplify transitions and reduce friction. Teams with strict security and compliance requirements Enhanced encryption and logging capabilities support governance and regulatory needs. IT departments looking to optimize storage costs and performance Flexible service levels, cool access tiers, and cache volumes deliver measurable efficiency gains. Whether you're supporting enterprise applications, managing hybrid cloud environments, or enabling global collaboration, these enhancements to Azure NetApp Files offer practical tools to improve performance, reduce costs, and strengthen security.   Next Steps If your organization is already using ANF or considering it as part of your cloud strategy, these new features are worth exploring. They offer tangible benefits across infrastructure, operations, and compliance—helping you get more value from your cloud investments.   Would you like help evaluating how these features could fit into your current environment or roadmap? Let’s talk https://www.netapp.com/azure/contact/       ... View more

Enterprise artificial intelligence represents one of the most transformative opportunities in modern business. Yet for many organizations, the path to AI implementation remains fraught with challenges. Data silos, security concerns, and the complexity of moving massive datasets to the cloud create barriers that can delay or derail AI initiatives entirely.   Microsoft and NetApp’s innovative approach changes this paradigm entirely. By enabling organizations to leverage Microsoft Azure AI services directly on their existing NetApp data infrastructure—whether on-premises or in the cloud—traditional bottlenecks are broken accelerating time-to-insight. This breakthrough capability transforms how enterprises approach AI, making it more accessible, secure, and cost-effective than ever before.   The Enterprise AI Imperative The statistics paint a compelling picture. According to recent industry research, 82% of enterprises want to leverage their data with generative AI 1 , while Forrester predicts a 50% boost in productivity and creative problem-solving from enterprise AI initiatives 2 . Perhaps most striking, 60% of workers will use their own AI tools to perform tasks 3 , highlighting the urgent need for enterprise-grade AI infrastructure.   This surge in demand creates both opportunity and challenge. Organizations recognize AI's potential to revolutionize operations, enhance customer experiences, and drive competitive advantage. However, they also face significant obstacles in implementing AI solutions effectively.   Breaking Down Traditional Barriers Traditional AI implementations require organizations to extract, transform, and move data to specialized platforms—a process that introduces risk, complexity, and cost. Data movement creates security vulnerabilities, compliance challenges, and often results in incomplete and out-of-sync datasets that compromise AI model accuracy.   Microsoft and NetApp’s approach eliminate these friction points through intelligent data infrastructure that brings AI capabilities directly to your data, regardless of location. This fundamental shift enables organizations to: Maintain Data Sovereignty: Keep sensitive information exactly where it belongs while accessing powerful AI capabilities Reduce Infrastructure Costs: Eliminate expensive data migration projects and redundant storage requirements Accelerate Implementation: Launch AI initiatives in weeks rather than months or years Ensure Compliance: Meet regulatory requirements by maintaining data residency and control Azure NetApp Files: The Foundation for Intelligent Data Infrastructure Azure NetApp Files serves as the cornerstone of this revolutionary approach. As a fully managed Microsoft storage service, it provides enterprise-grade performance, security, and scalability while maintaining seamless integration with Azure's comprehensive AI ecosystem.   The platform's architecture enables direct connectivity between your data and Azure's most powerful AI services, including Azure AI Foundry, Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Search, and Microsoft Fabric. This integration creates unprecedented opportunities for data utilization and insight generation.   Diagram: Unified Data Access & Intelligent Search Across   “Our clients are eager to tap into Azure AI, but success starts with having the right data foundation. NetApp’s integration with Azure allows Trace3 to help organizations streamline data management so they can focus on building impactful AI outcomes.” — Jason Achten, Principal Cloud Architect, Digital Solutions, Trace3   Key Capabilities Driving Enterprise Success Simplified Integration: The Object REST API unleashes the full power of Azure AI and data services on your enterprise data. This breakthrough eliminates complex data pipelines and enables direct access to AI capabilities through standardized interfaces. Enhanced Productivity: Organizations achieve dramatic efficiency gains by combining existing enterprise data with Azure's robust AI and analytics services. Teams can build sophisticated models, generate insights, and create intelligent applications without data engineering overhead. Robust Security Protocols: Azure NetApp Files maintains enterprise-grade security throughout the AI workflow. Data remains protected by comprehensive encryption, access controls, and monitoring capabilities that exceed industry standards. Unlimited Scalability: Handle growing data volumes and increasing AI workloads without infrastructure constraints. The platform scales seamlessly from terabytes to petabytes while maintaining consistent performance. Real-World Implementation Scenarios Intelligent Document Processing Consider a global financial services firm with millions of contracts, policies, and regulatory documents stored across multiple locations. Traditional approaches would require months of data migration and transformation before AI implementation could begin.   With NetApp's solution, the organization connects Azure AI Search and Azure OpenAI directly to existing document repositories. The AI services can immediately begin indexing, analyzing, and extracting insights from documents while they remain in their original locations. This approach enables rapid deployment of intelligent search capabilities, automated compliance checking, and contract analysis—all without moving a single file.   Advanced Analytics and Business Intelligence Manufacturing organizations generate massive amounts of operational data across production facilities worldwide. A leading manufacturer leveraged Azure NetApp Files to connect Azure Databricks directly to production data. The implementation enabled real-time quality analysis, predictive maintenance scheduling, and supply chain optimization. By keeping data in place, the organization maintained operational continuity while gaining powerful AI-driven insights that improved efficiency by 30% and reduced maintenance costs by 25%.   Diagram: Real-Time Analytics for AI/ML Workloads using Azure Databricks   Generative AI for Customer Service Retail organizations can transform customer service by connecting Azure OpenAI to product catalogs, customer interaction histories, and knowledge bases stored on NetApp infrastructure. This integration enables intelligent chatbots and virtual assistants that provide accurate, contextually relevant responses while maintaining customer data privacy. The solution processes thousands of concurrent interactions while continuously learning from new data, improving response quality and customer satisfaction scores without requiring data migration or system disruption.   The Strategic Advantage of Data-in-Place AI Microsoft and NetApp’s approach deliver measurable business outcomes that extend far beyond technical capabilities: Accelerated Time-to-Value: Organizations can deploy AI solutions in weeks rather than months, capturing business value immediately while competitors struggle with complex implementations. Reduced Total Cost of Ownership: Eliminating data movement, duplicate storage, and complex integration projects significantly reduces infrastructure costs and operational overhead. Enhanced Data Governance: Maintaining data in its original location preserves existing governance frameworks, compliance protocols, and security controls. Improved Model Accuracy: AI models trained on complete, unmodified datasets deliver superior performance compared to models built on migrated or transformed data subsets. Looking Forward: The seamless data and AI integration Revolution The seamless integration of NetApp data with Azure AI and data services represents a quantum leap in enterprise AI accessibility. This breakthrough technology enables compatible access to NetApp storage systems, creating seamless integration with virtually any AI or analytics service.   Organizations will be able to build sophisticated AI pipelines using familiar tools and protocols while maintaining complete control over data location, security, and governance. The API supports both on-premises ONTAP systems and Azure NetApp Files, ensuring consistent capabilities across hybrid cloud environments.   This innovation positions NetApp customers at the forefront of the AI revolution, with infrastructure that adapts to emerging technologies while protecting existing investments.   Building Your AI-Ready Infrastructure Success in the AI era requires intelligent data infrastructure that balances innovation with security, performance with cost-effectiveness, and scalability with simplicity. NetApp's comprehensive approach addresses all these requirements through proven technology and strategic partnerships.   Organizations implementing NetApp's AI-ready infrastructure report significant improvements in operational efficiency, decision-making speed, and competitive positioning. They achieve these outcomes while maintaining the highest standards of data security and regulatory compliance.   The convergence of NetApp's data management expertise with Microsoft's AI leadership creates unprecedented opportunities for enterprise transformation. Organizations that embrace this combination position themselves for sustained success in an increasingly AI-driven marketplace.   The future belongs to organizations that can harness the full power of their data assets. With NetApp and Microsoft Azure AI, that future is available today.  To explore more about Azure NetApp Files go here: https://www.netapp.com/azure/azure-netapp-files/     1 “AI Transformation Study”, IDC, January 2024 2 “Forecast Analysis: AI-Optimized Servers, Worldwide”, Gartner, November 2024 3 “Scaling AI Initiatives Responsibly: The Critical Role of an Intelligent Data Infrastructure”, IDC, May 2024       ... View more

With NetApp ® Cloud Volumes ONTAP ® software and Microsoft Azure VMware Solution, you’ll be able to extend or migrate block-based VMware workloads to Azure with minimal disruption—bringing enterprise-grade storage efficiency, data protection, and flexibility to VMware workloads running in Azure. ... View more

In today’s data-driven world, organizations are shifting from siloed data stacks toward intelligent, composable data platforms that support real-time analytics and AI workloads. ... View more