While the AI world has spent the last year racing from hype cycle to reality check, this conversation with Kris Cornwall, Senior Director of Product Marketing for Enterprise Storage at NetApp, feels more timely than ever. Because it turns out that building AI is the easy part. Getting it into production, scaling it, securing it, and making it deliver actual business value? That's where things get interesting. AI has officially graduated from science project status. It's now expected to drive business outcomes, deliver ROI, and operate with the same resilience, security, and reliability as any mission-critical enterprise workload. But getting there is easier said than done. Kris joins Phoebe and Mekka to unpack why data remains the biggest hurdle for organizations trying to scale AI, and what it really takes to move from proof of concept to production. The conversation dives into one of the hottest infrastructure topics in AI today: disaggregation. Kris explains how separating performance from capacity can help organizations scale AI workloads more efficiently, maximize expensive GPU investments, and avoid the infrastructure bottlenecks that often slow innovation. You'll also hear how enterprise-grade storage is evolving to meet AI's growing demands, from built-in ransomware protection and cloud integration to intelligent data mobility and metadata-powered data discovery. The takeaway? AI success isn't just about choosing the right model. It's about building the right data foundation underneath it. Tune in for a fan-favorite conversation on enterprise AI, data infrastructure, and the unglamorous truth nobody puts in the keynote: if your data strategy isn't ready, your AI strategy probably isn't either. Learn more: https://www.netapp.com/artificial-intelligence/ Connect with us! https://www.linkedin.com/in/phoebegoh/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinecornwall/

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

Transcript

Related