The most significant hardware announcement was Novus, a new storage architecture addressing a problem NetApp says affects GPU utilisation across large AI deployments. The company states that GPU utilisation routinely drops below 30 per cent in environments where storage cannot supply training data fast enough, cutting into returns on AI infrastructure investment. Novus pairs new metadata software with ONTAP-based AFF A90 systems to deliver throughput above 100 TB/s, intended to keep GPU clusters supplied continuously rather than sitting idle.
To reinforce the architecture behind Novus, NetApp also announced its intention to acquire PEAK:AIO, a specialist in metadata and parallel file system design for AI infrastructure. No financial terms were disclosed at the time of the conference.
European compliance requirements shaped a second strand of announcements. Keystone Sovereign will add data residency controls and EU-based support to NetApp's existing Keystone subscription service, enabling customers in regulated industries to demonstrate that their data remains within defined regional boundaries. Initial pilots will run in Germany and France, with NetApp describing those two markets as the first among European customers qualifying for the sovereign controls. The move responds to growing pressure from regulators and enterprise procurement teams in sectors such as financial services and public sector, where demonstrating regional data residency has become a baseline requirement for cloud contracts.
NetApp expanded its AI Data Engine, known as AIDE, with new features focused on the growing use of AI agents in enterprise workflows. The updated service lets organisations make data available to agents without physically moving it to a separate store, reducing replication overhead and keeping governance controls in place at the data source. The company also deepened its Commvault alliance, connecting ransomware detection outputs directly to recovery workflows with the aim of shortening the time from incident identification to clean restoration.
Hybrid multicloud management received several updates. A new capability called Console Autonomous Operations adds automated tasks to NetApp's management console, aiming to reduce the manual overhead that grows as organisations spread workloads across multiple environments. A conversational ChatOps interface allows administrators to issue instructions in natural language across their estate. NetApp also announced an expanded Nutanix integration, extending its data management layer to customers running hyperconverged infrastructure.
Taken together, the INSIGHT 2026 announcements touch four recognised pressure points in enterprise IT: AI throughput constraints, sovereign compliance, agentic data access and multicloud management. The two-country pilot for Keystone Sovereign, starting in Germany and France, is the nearest-term deliverable with a named geography.
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