The news from NetApp's annual conference highlighted agentic AI's impact on data storage. Here's what enterprise IT decision-makers can take away from these announcements.
Intelligence and advice powered by decades of global expertise and comprehensive coverage of the tech markets.
Published: 09 Oct 2026
With hordes of machine-powered agents poised to join their human counterparts in their never-ending demand for data, enterprise storage infrastructure environments must evolve. Recently at NetApp Insight 2026, audiences witnessed another step in that evolution. NetApp showcased multiple new announcements responding to the demands of artificial intelligence and the agentic enterprise.
According to Omdia research, 81% of organizations agreed that agentic AI is a strategic priority. As AI agents access ever-increasing volumes of sensitive corporate data, businesses will need to modernize their data storage environments everywhere, on- and off-premises. NetApp's announcements reveal a company seeking to extend its capabilities beyond traditional data storage and better serve the emerging data demands of agentic enterprises.
These were the three biggest news items from NetApp Insight 2026:
NetApp AI Data Engine. AIDE, a new SaaS product, maps, catalogs and classifies unstructured data across NetApp and heterogeneous storage environments without needing to copy or move files.
NetApp Novus. The new zettabyte-scale file system is designed to serve large-scale, multi-GPU AI factories. The design leverages a separate metadata layer, the NetApp Novus Data Director, running on qualified Supermicro infrastructure. The data storage layer is provided by NetApp OnTap with AFF A90 systems.
NetApp Keystone Sovereignty. This new service enables European organizations to support their specific data sovereignty requirements. It keeps data, logs, backups, telemetry and support within specified geographic boundaries along with documentation and monitoring, while providing European-based support and escalation paths.
What matters for IT decision-makers
NetApp AIDE. Multiple data storage vendors, including Everpure, HPE, Hitachi Vantara and Vast, have been investing in delivering data management functionality with their storage portfolios to accompany and, in some cases, attempt to replace existing data management platforms. NetApp is taking a more complementary approach by providing more functionality for storage administrators, empowering them to deliver greater value to their organization's AI initiatives. IT admins show a strong interest in playing a larger role in helping to manage their organization's data for AI, as 91% of practitioners said they want to take on more responsibility with data management or other AI capabilities to help their careers.
The takeaway for IT decision-makers is that this is a new potential avenue of differentiation when evaluating storage systems. It is critical, though, to understand the data classification and management roles within your organization and to prioritize the capabilities where the data storage layer can provide the greatest complementary value.
As the increased use of agentic AI increases the demand for and the unpredictability of data access, businesses will need better and more comprehensive tools. NetApp AIDE's ability to support heterogeneous storage infrastructure environments without requiring the movement of data is important. Contemporary enterprise environments are distributed, hybrid and multi-cloud, and they often include multiple vendors. Data management functionality locked into a single silo offers limited value. As part of the announcement, NetApp is offering the first six months of its AIDE service for free, making it easier to evaluate the value it can deliver for your organization.
NetApp Novus. AI has placed a premium on storage performance. NetApp Novus joins a crowded space of storage products designed for large, data-intensive AI environments, including Dell Exascale, DDN, EverPure FlashBlade//Exa, HPE Alletra Storage MP X10000, IBM Storage Scale, Scality ADI, Vast and Weka. As for NetApp's performance claims, Omdia audited the NetApp Novus and found that it demonstrated near-linear performance scaling as OnTap clusters were added to a single global namespace. As a result of that testing, Omdia models projected that the Novus architecture can scale to 100 TBps sequential read throughput with dozens of exabytes of effective capacity.
In the AI era, how efficiently you control, secure and access all your data will be paramount to maximizing the value of your storage investment.
Not every enterprise will need this level of scalability and performance today. But this design highlights what is possible, not only with Novus, but with OnTap as well. For IT decision-makers, it is a reminder of the importance of data throughput and storage performance in serving growing AI infrastructure environments. Providing sufficient performance to ensure full GPU utilization should be a top storage infrastructure priority in new deployments.
NetApp Keystone Sovereign. According to Omdia research, 73% of North American and European respondents reported they are implementing or piloting sovereign AI capabilities. Ensuring adherence to an evolving regulatory environment is essential to minimizing business risk, especially as a growing number of AI agents spin up, each one hungry for data.
The important takeaway from this announcement is an understanding that ensuring sovereignty involves more than simply deploying hardware on-premises. NetApp's approach targets the data, the protection and the processes, and it provides the monitoring and documentation to verify compliance. Currently, NetApp's approach is focused on Europe, where there is a regulatory need. There is a greater need, however, for data control beyond European sovereignty regulations. Moving forward, I would like to see NetApp extend this Keystone approach, possibly coupled with AIDE, to help a broader set of enterprises better control their data estates in the future.
Overall, NetApp's strategy is to evolve into the data platform that enterprises will need for the agentic era. If there is one universal takeaway from NetApp's announcements, it is that storage buyers should no longer evaluate options solely based on system specs. Performance, resilience and capacity will always be important. But in the AI era, how efficiently you control, secure and access all your data will be paramount to maximizing the value of your storage investment. NetApp seems to be building upon the strategic foundations it put in place years ago with its data fabric strategy, innovating to deliver value to the entire data estate.
Scott Sinclair is Practice Director with Omdia covering the storage industry.
Omdia is a division of Informa TechTarget. Its analysts have business relationships with technology vendors.
