Infrastructure modernization: Unlocking long-term success with unified data storage

Imagine navigating a busy city using outdated paper maps. It’s slow, cumbersome, and inaccurate. Then you upgrade to a GPS that guides you effortlessly, adapting to changes and making sure you get there quickly. Modernizing your IT infrastructure is just like that: moving from rigid, outdated systems to an intelligent approach that moves your business toward its destination. 

Outdated infrastructure and data management slow innovation and waste resources. Modernizing your IT infrastructure can help reduce costs, enable scalability, and drive long-term business success. What’s the best way to get started?  

People often associate infrastructure modernization with purchasing new servers and equipment. That’s a limited view of what modernization can achieve. Think of modernizing infrastructure as upgrading how you store, process, and manage data. Legacy systems hold you back, create inefficiencies, and prevent scalability. Developing an intelligent data infrastructure for unified data storage fundamentally transforms how you manage your data. 

Unified data storage integrates all types of data—including file, block, and object—into one system, simplifying data management and generating better business outcomes. Data can be stored on premises, in the cloud, or in a hybrid environment. With unified data storage, it’s easy to classify, move, manage, and govern any kind of data, anywhere. Smart infrastructure cuts complexity and unlocks your data’s potential. 

Unifying data storage allows you to break out of silos and improve performance and data mobility across any hybrid multicloud environment. Flexible, scalable data powers today’s most demanding applications. However, having the right infrastructure is key to supporting emerging technologies. Nowhere is this more evident than in AI workloads, which require data that can move quickly and efficiently between environments and along the pipeline. 

AI is about delivering speed, scale, and smarts—and your data management should be, too. With data flowing freely through your AI pipeline, training and modeling are faster, and insights emerge in record time. The result? Sharper decision-making and quicker innovation that keeps you ahead of your competition. 

But it doesn’t stop there. Unified data storage supercharges performance for GPU-heavy workloads to deliver efficiency and scale that support the full AI lifecycle. By optimizing GPU utilization and provisioning data with precision, you can squeeze maximum value from your infrastructure. In short, it’s your ticket to staying productive, agile, and competitive in a fast-moving, AI-driven world. 

A leading automotive manufacturer used NetApp® solutions and a unified data storage approach to unlock the power of AI for autonomous vehicle technology. By eliminating silos across edge, core, and cloud, the company was able to accelerate AI model training and optimize the performance of its autonomous systems. The result was a 30% reduction in time to market and significantly enhanced safety features, leading to faster deployment and increased consumer trust. 

Are you trying to balance innovation with budget constraints? An intelligent data infrastructure has you covered. Integrating legacy systems with the latest technologies lets you keep your existing investments working while embracing new solutions—no expensive overhauls needed. Streamlined operations mean reduced overhead, better efficiency, and no trade-offs on performance. 

And it’s not just your bottom line that benefits. Improved storage efficiency, backed by actionable insights, cuts costs and shrinks your carbon footprint. Features like cloud tiering, replication, and backup take advantage of cloud sustainability and use resources wisely. The payoff? Financial savings and a greener operation, proving that you can be cost-effective and eco-conscious at the same time. 

Modernizing your infrastructure goes beyond basic technology upgrades. It's about embracing an intelligent data infrastructure, so your applications and systems are efficient, scalable, and ready for whatever comes next. The key benefits of partnering with NetApp to modernize your infrastructure include: 

• Simplified management. NetApp offers a unified control console and AIOps capabilities to simplify management and make operations less complex across hybrid environments. AIOps automates routine tasks such as performance monitoring, anomaly detection, and predictive maintenance. You can manage data seamlessly, wherever it’s stored. 

• Integrated cloud solutions. NetApp solutions are natively integrated with the world’s largest public clouds, including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Native integration provides flexibility and a consistent experience across both on-premises and cloud environments.  

• Built-In security and cyber resilience. NetApp solutions offer built-in data encryption, ransomware protection, and backup capabilities, keeping your data secure. For example, a healthcare provider used NetApp’s ransomware protection to prevent an attack that could have compromised patient records. Detecting the threat early and using immutable backups meant that no data was lost. 

Modernizing your infrastructure is key to long-term success. Adopting intelligent data infrastructure with unified storage boosts performance, cuts costs, and builds a scalable, resilient foundation. With unified data storage, you're not just modernizing for today. You’re preparing for the future, building a resilient, adaptable infrastructure that can evolve with you. 

Explore how NetApp can help you modernize your infrastructure and unlock the power of your data.