good afternoon everyone and welcome back to the cubes live coverage of net apppp converge here in Las Vegas Nevada I'm your host Rebecca Knight sitting alongside my co-host and analyst Rob stretche Rob one thing that is so clear about the conversations that we've been having here today on the cube is that net netup has such a strong culture and it really brings that culture to its relationships with its part ERS and customers too absolutely and I think it's that is the basis of a lot of what net apppp has been about for decades now is the fact that it's built with the partners and going to market with the partners and really focusing in on that which is why it's great to be talking about thisafternoon speaking of Partnerships we have anothernew guest here joining us he is Derrik Elbert he is Technical Solutions architect at worldwide technology thank you so much for coming on the cube Derek thanks for having me I appreciate it so let's start for the unano tell our viewers a little bit about wwt what you're all about yeah so wwt if you think about what they're written as is a Solutions integrator right but there we're honestly a lot more um if you look at how we go to market uh there's really seven main solution areas that we go to market right and net app plays in a large majority of those um when we're talking about modern data center so normal compute storage networking and then also in the uh Cloud platform arena with all the cloud providers plus the AI and data strategy solution area as well so that's where we've actually been spending quite a bit of time is in that Ai and data strategy solution area inside wwt with net app yeah let let's dig in a little bit deeper in that because Ithink again i' I've known wwt having worked with them in your you know like yourself many times uh as being at net apppp in other places and what I always really liked was The Innovation that you build a solution with net apppp it's not just about hey I'm going to ship you a box good luck it's about howyou bring a solution let's talk and kind of un unpack a little bit that AI solution yeah so we have something in uh St Louis that a lot of other partners or Solutions integrators don't have and that's a Advanced Technology Center right and we've been talking about it for a really long time but it's a real facility so we have five data centers in St Louis we also connect to all the public Cloud providers through equinex so we have that collocation facility as well but that's where we bring in all of the Technologies from all of the vendors right uh NetApp has a very large footprint there there's about 70 net app systems there and that's where we can actually provide a place for customers to come bring their workload to us allow us to spin that up on our Hardware right that they are leasing out or renting out right in terms of gettingthe PC off the ground and then they can actually prove out that the workload that they want to run on this on their net app system or whatever the system is will actually run yeah and you were saying that again you know AI is so hot and it's a little bit confusing to some people we were kind of reflecting on Rag and rag architecture retrieval augmented generation for those who don't know what rag stands for youguys are really diving in into that kind of solution as well with one of the partners who's actually going to be on later today Nvidia yeah so good point um so earlier this year uh wwt committed a $500 million over fiveyear investment specifically around Ai and Nvidia right and so with that inside the Advanced Technology Center we carved out what we are calling the AI Proving Ground right so we've taken what we've already done with the Advanced Technology Center and built it specifically for AI right so all the dgx is that are in there there's um there's all the storage vendors Network equipment all of the platforms thatmake up that entire AI stack but more importantly Ithink net app's in a unique position right because we have a dedicated environment right that has uh net app a a800 AFF a800 plus a dgx and it is all Cloud connected meaning it is connected to through blue XP to FSX for ontap and AWS uh as your net up files inMicrosoft and Google Cloud netup volume so we've already done all the connection for the customers andon top of that we've taken nvidia's Nemo framework carved out a rag architecture inside of that framework and allowed customers a platform a chatbot interface to come and test out with Enterprise data sources to help augment andmake that um large language model more authoritative so what are you hearing ing from customers I mean asyou said earlier having this facility really sets you apart what are they taking away from their experiences so we find ourselves in a unique position where there's everybody's talking about AI right and I think there's a small percentage that actually know how to do it right or what to do with it right so we have this place where they can come if they're more advanced they can actually bring their workload and run it on our hardware and actually test the use case but usually where we find customers is they are still trying to identify and prioritize what these use cases are right so that's where we have to take a step back and go more into the consultative Business Solution aspect of wwt and help them actually maap out okay here's a list of let's say 70 use cases we map them based off complexity and value and obviously the ones that are of higher value and lower complexity are the ones that the customers should be implementing becausethey're the ones that they're going to see the most value in and we've actually done that internally um with our own uh set of tools and use cases and all of ours are based around employee experience but we showcase them to our customers and they go oh I think we can do that as well so teach me how you did it so it's really about us proving out to ourselves that we can you know have these use cases and do it and then show it to the customers that are still trying to identify the use cases andmake sure that they can build them out as well right and actually help them do that soagain wwt and netup have had a long standing relationship how are you using net apps I I'd say features and tools and platforms to really address some of uh yourjoint customers challenges like how are you using blue XP and other things good point right so I mentioned that we're all Cloud connected through Blu XP but I think where that plays a big piece is so net app has a lot of outof the-box security features built into ontap right whether it's autonomous ransomware protection uh snapshots the ability to replicate to another ontap system whether that's in the cloud or in another data center so all those things we can showcase the customers in order to add a layer of data protection and security right or cyber resiliency to their data so when they're in a scenario where they're using a chatbot and they have rag with Enterprise data sources theycan actually ensure that those Enterprise data sources are secure number one and then with the other portfolio products inside Blu XP such as classification they can actually look at that individual volume that they're ingesting into Rag and make sure that the data that's in there has no pii or no PSI right and that the data is governed and compliant and meets all the standards that the customer needs to ensure that their rag environment is secure and compliant so and we can showcase all of that right with everything that we have built out that's a unique position you really described that this is such a journey for so many different customers who are at various points interms of wherethey are with AI how are you um working with them to determine exactly I mean as youdescribed the using the use cases are there some success stories that you want to share about C customers saying oh yeah that that's going to work and that's really going to make a difference yeah um so we have a lot of success stories already um so wwt has been doing AI right for about a o maybe a little over a decade uh and most of the use cases that we have are traditional applied AI right notthe newer generative AI Solutions um but we have started evolving thesolutions on industry specifics whether it's Global financials or Healthcare and Life Sciences um or whether it's retail right there's astory that we can help them tell um and part of that is because we have such a good relationship not just with net apppp right but also with Nvidia that we can go in as a trio right and present to the customer a full solution where we are providing the consultative business value of the actual hardware and software stack thatNetApp and Nvidia bring to bear um but we can actually show that to the customer andtake it to Market right no Ithink that to me is one of the keys so just to kind of bring it home I mean there was a lot of announcements today what how do you foresee these announcements being applied as you go back home and get with the rest of the crew and at WT because you guys had probably seen these before but as road map and now they're here and you're going to go and apply these for customers sothe biggest thing with the new uh AFF ASA right um and the unified platform is performance right and that was one piece of if you start talking superod and um performant workloads for AI right there was always kind of a question mark right like yeah net app has performance solutions but are they as import performant as ex competitor right whatever that competitor may be and now I think with the new announcements they put themselves a step up in that category so that not only can they can that app talk about the ability to secure provide a layer of compliance to the data to manage the data and the mobility of that data that whole data management layer but now let's talk about performance too with the new systems because that's entirely what they're built for excellent well Dereck Albert thank you so much for coming on the cube a great conversation yeah thanks for having me I'm Rebecca Knight for Rob stretch stay tuned for more of the Cube's live coverage of net app converge you're watching the cube the leader in technology Enterprise news and Analysis