NetApp Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. are recasting their joint FlexPod enterprise infrastructure platform as a pretested solution for artificial intelligence deployments. Speaking at NetApp INSIGHT, executives from both companies outlined how the 16-year-old franchise is shifting to address the unique integration risks created by production AI workloads.
Designing Infrastructure Around Data Movement
AI applications demand simultaneous high performance across storage, networking, compute, and security resources. Cisco Vice President James Cole noted during the broadcast that while data center designs historically forced applications to fit existing infrastructure, enterprise AI requires infrastructure to be built around data movement.
To prevent complex integrations from causing operational delays, NetApp and Cisco expanded their FlexPod offerings for AI workloads in June. The validated designs are intended to give enterprise customers flexibility in hardware selection while removing the burden of manual system integration.
Track Record and Future Expansion
According to NetApp Chief Partner and Ecosystem Officer Alvaro Celis, the FlexPod joint initiative has accumulated over 10,000 enterprise customers and created $21 billion in ecosystem value over nearly two decades. The deep engineering alignment between NetApp, Cisco, and their shared channel network allows the partnership to execute prevalidated architectures at scale.
The companies plan to release further joint updates for FlexPod AI and anticipate that additional technology partners will join the ecosystem to support future data center demands.
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Source: Decades of DIY best-of-breed give way to pretested stacks as AI raises integration risk
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