As we move further into autumn, conferences start to come thick and fast. This week was NetApp's annual Insight event, live from Las Vegas, where there was another chance to hear more about how smart storage, AI factories, and data readiness can empower enterprises.

However, it's been a challenging year for NetApp, with growing concern over the ever-rising cost of hardware and the rapid expansion of agentic AI pulling safety concerns into focus.

"I will say, anecdotally, I do think that storage is becoming the next big talking point when it comes to AI. We've gone from talking about GPUs; we've spoken about latency – latency is part of the story when it comes to storage – as we move away from training to inference, storage becomes a more important part of the AI infrastructure."

"The company appears very confident that this is going to be a key differentiator from their perspective; Keystone is a storage as a services offering and offers a degree of flexibility and scalability for customers, and adding that sovereign add-on is a big lure for companies."