The Spanish capital has become a strategic epicenter for major tech companies seeking to expand their global influence. The latest to join this trend is NetApp, a US multinational specializing in data storage and management, which has announced that from its new office in Madrid it will not only manage the Iberian market but also drive innovation projects for its EEMI region (Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Iberia). This decision reinforces Spain's role as an international tech hub and underscores the importance of robust data infrastructures in the era of artificial intelligence.

A quarter century of presence in Spain

José Manuel Petisco, vice president of the EEMI region at NetApp, recalled that the company has been established in Spain for 25 years, where he assures it “achieves record revenues, not only in Iberia but in every single market in the region.” Although local data is not disclosed, both Petisco and Maite Ramos, director of the Iberian subsidiary, highlighted that these figures are much higher than those of other markets. The Madrid office, which currently employs about a hundred people, has become a nerve center for developing projects spanning four continents.

Global figures and the AI boost

Globally, NetApp reported positive results in its last fiscal year (ending in April), with revenue of $6.93 billion (up 5% year-over-year) and net profit of $1.276 billion (an 8% increase). These rising figures have a clear driver: the AI frenzy, which requires a strong data infrastructure behind it. “Because without data, there is no AI,” Petisco emphasized, highlighting the strong reception in Iberia of NetApp's high-performance All-Flash storage arrays, widely used to store data for training AI models.

In fact, Maite Ramos added that “30% of the projects NetApp carries out in Iberia are AI-related.” Moreover, conversations with clients about data security and sovereignty—a topic of high interest in the European market—“are almost at the same level as those about AI.” The Iberian subsidiary works with over 95% of IBEX 35 companies and currently has major security and AI projects underway with these firms.

Evolution from traditional storage to intelligent platform

Ramos recalled the metamorphosis NetApp has undergone in recent years, transitioning from a hardware manufacturer to a global intelligent data infrastructure platform. “The latest modernization of ONTAP [the storage operating system and data management software] that we just launched this week places us above other traditional storage manufacturers and equals or even slightly surpasses software-defined storage market players,” she noted. “It has been challenging, but we have achieved it,” she added.

NetApp's major competitors include Everpure (formerly Pure Storage), Dell, HPE, and IBM in traditional storage, while in software-defined storage and hyperconvergence, Broadcom (which acquired VMware), Nutanix, and Red Hat stand out. Although NetApp has agreements with the three major hyperscalers (AWS, Microsoft, and Google Cloud), which natively offer ONTAP within their cloud platforms, it also indirectly competes with the high-availability block and file storage services these companies offer. Manel Picalló, technical director of NetApp Iberia, noted that the company is “completely agnostic” regarding the cloud technology used by clients.

AI as the main driver

The democratization of AI in the business world has led companies to process large volumes of unstructured data. NetApp has seized this opportunity and modernized its offering, launching infrastructures such as ultra-fast 100% flash storage families. The main problem detected by the NetApp team is that many organizations lack a data architecture prepared for this technological shift. “60% of AI projects fail, and 70-80% of those failures are due to not having the right data infrastructure. In the AI era, traditional storage architectures are not valid,” Picalló stated. “Our software is ready to curate data and remove duplicate layers,” added Ramos.

Furthermore, both emphasized the role of storage not only for saving data but also for protecting it. NetApp has integrated real-time ransomware detection capabilities because “if a company's data storage infrastructure goes down, the company stops,” according to Ramos. The company is so confident in its recovery capability that it signs contracts with clients committing to pay if they fail to restore the data.

Implications for businesses and IT professionals

This move by NetApp reinforces the need for companies to adopt modern data infrastructures to avoid falling behind in the AI race. For IT professionals, it represents an opportunity to specialize in intelligent storage technologies and data management, skills that are increasingly in demand. At ForgeNEX, we have covered related topics such as implementing generative AI in workflows and configuring secure VPNs and firewalls, which complement the data security strategy.

Additionally, NetApp's integration with hyperscalers allows companies to adopt hybrid and multicloud architectures, an approach we have explored in our article on business productivity with Microsoft 365. Data sovereignty, a critical topic in Europe, is also addressed in our guides on managing online courses and digital solutions for HORECA.

Original source: ComputerWorld. Analysis and adaptation by ForgeNEX.