During a press lunch held in Madrid, Maite Ramos, general director of NetApp for Spain and Portugaly Jaimie Balametechnical director of NetApp for Latin America, detailed to the Spanish media the main product, strategy and vision innovations that the American multinational presented at its global event NetApp Insight 2025 last October in Las Vegas.
The event served to “land” innovations from the international ecosystem to the national market and reflect on the impact of intelligent data infrastructure, applied AI and cybersecurity on the Spanish business fabric.
And NetApp has taken a qualitative leap in its strategic positioning. After 33 years in the global storage market, the company has completed its transformation from a classic storage provider to an architect of intelligent data infrastructure.
Both managers left a clear message: many organizations hear great promises about AI, but the reality is that the success of these projects depends much more on the data and its infrastructure than on the algorithmic development itself.
As Maite Ramos explained, “the challenge is to create a solid, flexible and truly AI-ready infrastructure that allows large Spanish companies to connect all data, both on-premises and in the cloud, in a governed, secure and scalable way. Now it is not just about storing, but about converting the data into an engine of real intelligence and a lever for continuous innovation.”
NetApp AFX y AI Data Engine
Among the international novelties that will be adapted to real cases in the Spanish market, Maite Ramos and Jaime Balañá highlighted NetApp AFX y NetApp AI Data Engine (HELP)
NetApp AFX is a new generation of enterprise flash storage, disaggregated and ready for AI workloads and exabytes of data. “Our AI factories are already a reality. With AFX’s disaggregated architectures and certified with NVIDIA DGX, we help industrial, energy companies or public administrations to operate with petabytes and scale by projects, without depending on rigid architectures,” explained Jaime Balañá.
AFX Key Features:
– Disaggregated architecture: It decouples performance and capacity, allowing independent scaling of both parameters.
– Massive linear scaling: Designed to scale up to 128 nodes with terabytes per second of bandwidth and exabyte-scale capacity.
– Optional DX50 data control nodes: They enable a global metadata engine for a real-time catalog of enterprise data, leveraging NVIDIA accelerated computing.
– Integrated cyber resilience: It offers the same robust data management and protection that has defined NetApp’s reputation, with a secure multi-tenant environment and seamless integration between on-premises and cloud environments.
For its part, NetApp AI Data Engine (AIDE), developed in alliance with NVIDIA, automates the preparation, vectorization and access to large volumes of data for generative AI projects and autonomous agents, simplifying tasks that previously required weeks of manual work. “Let’s think about engineering, banking or retail, where semantic contextualization and data protection is vital. AIDE allows you to connect data with new and legacy AI applications in a unified way,” emphasized Jaime Balañá.
AIDE Key Capabilities:
– Automation of data pipelines: Detects changes and synchronizes data automatically, eliminating redundant copies and ensuring data is always up to date.
– Integration with NVIDIA: Leverages the NVIDIA AI Data Platform reference design, with accelerated computing and NVIDIA AI Enterprise software, including NVIDIA NIM microservices for vectorization and recovery.
– Native security and governance: Security guardrails follow data throughout its AI lifecycle, ensuring privacy and regulatory compliance.
– Advanced semantic discovery: Advanced compression, fast semantic search, and secure policy-based workflows.
Sovereign data and cyber resilience
In the session, Maite Ramos focused on sovereignty and resilience: “For Spain and Europe, data sovereignty is central. We bring AI to the data, not the data to the AI. The autonomous detection of ransomware and the ability to recover in minutes, together with the new agreements with hyperscalars and the deep integration with Microsoft Azure, are already critical demands of our clients in Spain.”
NetApp’s security commitment includes immutable snapshots, a “security belt around data” and an ecosystem that allows integration with cloud tools or public services without losing control or regulatory compliance.
The management of NetApp Iberia sees the Spanish market ready to take the leap. Both spokespersons agreed that large Spanish clients (banking, public administrations, utilities, health sector) demand environments where they can demonstrate reductions in deadlines and costs, greater security in the event of incidents and complete control over the entire life cycle of the data.
