Many companies out there are tired of sitting on their data waiting for it to hatch. When will computing services vendors come up with a solution that helps them turn a profit from data? First of all, the market’s driving technologies for big-data analytics and artificial intelligence aren’t exactly easy to master. But hybrid computing methods that bring analytics and AI to the data for quicker action can speed the enterprise along in the right direction, according to George Kurian (pictured), chief executive officer of NetApp Inc.

It’s so important for data technologies to span entire hybrid and multicloud maps, because “speed is the new scale,” Kurian said. “It’s the hallmark of competitive differentiation and advantage in the digital world.”

Kurian spoke with Lisa Martin (@LuccaZara) and Stu Miniman (@stu), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during today’s NetApp Insight event in Las Vegas. They discussed NetApp’s sharpening focus on multicloud, data management and AI. (* Disclosure below.)

Digital-native startups can’t touch incumbents’ data troves

To move at the speed of digital business, companies need a blanket set of data services that operate across all environments, according to Kurian. This is what NetApp’s evolving Data Fabric offers, and it is resonating more and more with existing and new customers.

Older, established companies may appear to be at a disadvantage in the digital era compared to digital-native startups. However, older companies have an ace up their sleeve, Kurian pointed out. A large store of data amassed over years is “the critical asset that you have that the born-digital companies don’t,” he said. But these companies must modernize the way they operate on the data with a strategy that moves away from silos toward a unified fabric.

NetApp has forged deep engineering partnerships with the likes of Nvidia Corp. to enable cross-cloud AI capabilities, according to Kurian. And the company has released a multicloud control plane for containers (a virtualized method for running distributed applications) and container-management platform Kubernetes.

We can expect NetApp to bring a number of innovations to its Data Fabric in the near future, according to Kurian.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the NetApp Insight event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for NetApp Insight. Neither NetApp Inc., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE