NetApp and Luxembourg-based emma Technologies are joining forces to offer European organisations a sovereign AI solution. NetApp provides the data layer, emma the GPU capacity and the cloud operations platform.
NetApp and emma Technologies are announcing a strategic partnership. Together, they want to give European companies access to a sovereign AI infrastructure, without locking them into a single cloud. The joint initiative forms one integrated solution. Emma offers GPU capacity in its own European data centres and provides the cloud operations platform for distributed infrastructure.
Sovereignty
European organisations need to run high-performance AI applications with large data volumes while also meeting strict data sovereignty requirements. Emma’s cloud-agnostic platform responds to that need. Companies can run their AI applications with hyperscale cloud providers, in emma’s European data centres or on private infrastructure, without sacrificing control or performance.
Dmitry Panenkov, founder and CEO of emma, says the conversation with European customers has changed. According to him, they no longer ask whether they should use AI, but where they can do so without losing control of their data.
NetApp Platform
In the joint offering, the NetApp Platform delivers both file and object storage within one unified architecture. This is AI storage based on NetApp’s ONTAP software. According to the company, that is essential for emma’s AI environment, which multiple customers use.
The systems offer scalability, cyber resilience and data protection. Because NetApp offers a single storage solution for multiple clouds and private infrastructure, workloads can move between those environments.
Willem Hendrickx, SVP and GM EMEA and LATAM at NetApp, believes European enterprises should never have to choose between AI innovation and data sovereignty. He says emma is building the kind of sovereign cloud infrastructure the European market needs. With the NetApp Platform at its core, NetApp is helping emma set up the data infrastructure it needs to realise its vision.