NetApp and Lenovo Offer Converged Infrastructure Solution Optimized for GenAI
NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) and Lenovo announced the NetApp AIPod with Lenovo ThinkSystem servers for NVIDIA OVX, a converged infrastructure optimized for generative AI. This solution aims to simplify, accelerate, and reduce the cost of AI deployment for enterprises. It integrates NetApp's storage systems, Lenovo's reliable ThinkSystem SR675 V3 servers, and NVIDIA's AI Enterprise software, enabling AI RAG and inferencing operations. Key features include support for NVIDIA NIM inference microservices, hybrid cloud data management, and seamless integration into AI ecosystems. The product will be available by summer 2024.
- NetApp and Lenovo’s partnership offers a converged infrastructure solution optimized for generative AI.
- The NetApp AIPod integrates leading technologies from NetApp, Lenovo, and NVIDIA, enhancing AI deployment capabilities.
- The solution simplifies AI deployment for enterprises, reducing time and complexity.
- Supports AI RAG and inferencing operations for practical applications like chatbots, knowledge management, and object recognition.
- Available by summer 2024, potentially accelerating AI adoption in enterprises.
- The press release does not provide specific financial benefits or projected ROI for users investing in the new solution.
- Potential high costs associated with initial deployment and integration of the NetApp AIPod.
- The availability is set for summer 2024, which could delay immediate adoption and benefits.
Insights
The announcement of the NetApp AIPod with Lenovo ThinkSystem servers for NVIDIA OVX holds significant implications for the tech industry. This partnership melds the strengths of three leading companies in data infrastructure, server reliability and AI platforms. The convergence of these technologies aims to simplify AI adoption for enterprises, removing substantial barriers related to cost, integration complexity and time to deployment.
From a technical standpoint, the use of NVIDIA's AI Enterprise software platform and the support for inferencing microservices and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) mark important advancements. RAG allows enterprises to leverage their proprietary data without the need for large-scale model training, which is often resource-intensive and time-consuming. This feature could democratize AI capabilities, making it more accessible to businesses of varying sizes and expertise levels.
Furthermore, the integration of the NVIDIA Spectrum-X Networking and the Lenovo ThinkSystem’s reliability enhances the robustness of the solution, ensuring high performance and scalability. These aspects are particularly vital for enterprises aiming to deploy AI for critical functions like chatbots, knowledge management and object recognition. Overall, this collaboration could accelerate the broader adoption of AI, fostering innovation and efficiency across industries.
From a market perspective, this joint venture between NetApp, Lenovo and NVIDIA is poised to generate substantial interest. Enterprises often face challenges in AI deployment due to the high costs and complexity involved. The NetApp AIPod aims to mitigate these issues by offering a pre-integrated and cost-effective solution. By lowering entry barriers, this product could attract a broader customer base, including small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that previously found AI adoption prohibitive.
Moreover, NetApp’s established position in the unstructured data storage market provides a solid foundation for this new product. The emphasis on inferencing and RAG can unlock significant value from existing data, which is a compelling proposition for data-driven organizations looking to optimize their operations and gain actionable insights. The market's positive reception could be reflected in increased sales and market share for all three companies involved.
However, it is important to note that while the product simplifies AI deployment, the ultimate success will depend on the real-world performance and adaptability of the solution in diverse business environments. Potential customers will closely scrutinize the actual implementation process and support services offered.
Simple, affordable, and powerful infrastructure solution makes AI more accessible for enterprises
Generative AI has created extensive opportunities for organizations, though many may feel as if AI is out of reach due to the cost, integration complexity, and time to deployment. Meanwhile, pre-built large language models (LLMs) often do not have training on the most up-to-date or relevant data organizations need to generate valuable insights or effectively automate routine tasks.
NetApp has led in unstructured data storage for over three decades, and much of the world’s enterprise unstructured data is stored in NetApp storage. Unlocking the full value of this data requires going far beyond foundational model training. By enabling inferencing and RAG, the NetApp AIPod with Lenovo’s leading server reliability, quality, and performance makes it seamless, simple, and fast to combine the power of LLMs with precise, up-to-date, and pertinent information on NetApp storage.
"The NetApp AIPod with Lenovo ThinkSystem servers for NVIDIA OVX transforms enterprise AI by delivering a pre-integrated, high-performance solution that accelerates the deployment and scaling of generative AI workloads," said Sandeep Singh, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Enterprise Storage at NetApp. "Through our collaboration with NVIDIA and Lenovo, NetApp is empowering organizations to harness the capabilities of AI more efficiently, ensuring that they can focus on creating value and gaining insights from their data without the complexity of building and managing AI infrastructure from scratch."
NetApp AIPod combines NetApp's robust storage systems with hybrid cloud data management, including Lenovo's high-performance ThinkSystem SR675 V3 servers, the leading platforms supporting NVIDIA-certified OVX architecture with NVIDIA L40S GPUs, as well as NVIDIA Spectrum-X Networking, providing a complete and seamless infrastructure solution to streamline AI adoption. Using this solution, customers will be able to conduct AI RAG and inferencing operations for use cases like chatbots, knowledge management, and object recognition. NetApp, in collaboration with Lenovo and NVIDIA, simplifies AI deployment by seamlessly integrating into ecosystems, simplifying operations, accelerating implementation, and safeguarding AI infrastructure, enabling organizations to unlock AI's full potential.
“Lenovo is expanding our partnership with NetApp and NVIDIA to bring the power of AI to every business as part of our continued commitment to enabling and simplifying hybrid AI for our joint customers,” said Kirk Skaugen, President of Lenovo Infrastructure Solutions Group. “As customers deploy AI, they demand business critical availability, ease of management, and infrastructure efficiency. The NetApp AIPod with Lenovo ThinkSystem servers for NVIDIA OVX delivers optimized and validated solutions to make generative AI more accessible for businesses of every size.”
“Making AI accessible and scalable for every industry is more important than ever,” said Bob Pette, Vice President of Enterprise Platforms at NVIDIA. “The NetApp AIPod with Lenovo for NVIDIA OVX offers an AI-ready platform that’s powerful and easy to use, enabling businesses to drive innovation.”
NetApp AIPod with Lenovo for NVIDIA OVX will be available by summer 2024.
Additional Resources
- NetApp AIPodTM with Lenovo for NVIDIA OVX: The Power of Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Every Enterprise
- NetApp Unveils Unified Data Storage Built for the AI Era
- AIPod: Delivering the Promise
About NetApp
NetApp is the intelligent data infrastructure company, combining unified data storage, integrated data services, and CloudOps solutions to turn a world of disruption into opportunity for every customer. NetApp creates silo-free infrastructure, harnessing observability, and AI to enable the industry’s best data management. As the only enterprise-grade storage service natively embedded in the world’s biggest clouds, our data storage delivers seamless flexibility. In addition, our data services create a data advantage through superior cyber resilience, governance, and application agility. Our CloudOps solutions provide continuous optimization of performance and efficiency through observability and AI. No matter the data type, workload, or environment, with NetApp you can transform your data infrastructure to realize your business possibilities. Learn more at www.netapp.com or follow us on X, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
NETAPP, the NETAPP logo, and the marks listed at www.netapp.com/TM are trademarks of NetApp, Inc. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240514466001/en/
Media Contact:
Kenya Hayes
NetApp
kenya.hayes@netapp.com
Investor Contact:
Kris Newton
NetApp
kris.newton@netapp.com
Source: NetApp
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