APAC firms still in AI test mode as data readiness issues persist

Even as tech suppliers like OpenAI and Nvidia are pouring billions into artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, much of the corporate sector has not moved past the experimental stage on the AI adoption curve, according to Andrew Sotiropoulos, senior vice-president and general manager for Asia-Pacific at NetApp.

Speaking to Computer Weekly on the sidelines of a customer event in Singapore, Sotiropoulos said while there are many companies that are testing the use of AI in specific projects, very few are putting “pedal to the metal” and going into full production.

The bottleneck, he noted, isn’t a lack of ambition but the state of enterprise data. For AI models to be effective, they require vast amounts of clean, organised information, but many companies are sitting on fragmented data silos that are difficult to process.

“That is the single biggest issue everyone has, even internally. It is all about cleansing the data and getting it AI-ready,” he said, calling the ability to solve this problem the industry’s “ticket to the dance.”

To address this, NetApp has rolled out a software suite called AI Data Engine (AIDE) that provides semantic search, data vectorisation, and data guardrails to simplify the entire AI data pipeline by collapsing multiple data preparation and management steps.

Through data change detection and data synchronisation, AIDE also helps to eliminate redundant copies and keeps data up to date. More importantly, it allows data scientists to focus on model training rather than manual data preparation while ensuring that the data feeding the models is clean and traceable, a requirement for enterprise compliance.

Meanwhile, NetApp has also introduced AFX, a disaggregated storage architecture that lets enterprises scale their storage and compute independently. This helps improve the economics of AI workloads, preventing organisations from overprovisioning storage compute and improving resource efficiency.

For now, AIDE runs with AFX on-premise, but NetApp aims to expand their reach to public clouds and other locations, including neoclouds from sovereign cloud providers such as Singapore’s Bitdeer and India’s Yotta.

“The sovereign cloud play is the next wave,” Sotiropoulos said, noting that neocloud providers are gaining traction by addressing data residency and sovereignty requirements that global players sometimes struggle with. Neocloud providers are also building up their AI capabilities as a Trojan horse to build relationships with customers, he added.

The growing demand for AI infrastructure, however, is placing pressure on NetApp’s channel partners. Sotiropoulos admitted that traditional distributors and systems integrators face a “knowledge, speed, and capability” gap. He urged partners to secure a “seat at the table” by upskilling their workforce to manage the full AI solution stack, rather than just the hardware components.

NetApp claims to be gaining market share. Citing recent market data from analyst firm IDC, Sotiropoulos said the company has narrowed the gap with its competitors in both all-flash and total enterprise storage segments. Globally, NetApp ranked third in terms of revenue during the third quarter of 2025, behind Dell Technologies and Huawei.

Sotiropoulos attributed NetApp’s growth to its unified data strategy, which allows customers to replicate data management policies across on-premise and public cloud environments, along with AI operations and cyber resiliency capabilities.

Sotiropoulos’ comments came as NetApp brought its flagship customer event to Singapore for the first time, a move that reflects the city-state’s position as a gateway to the broader ASEAN market.

While the company previously flew customers to its global event in Las Vegas for such updates, budget constraints and the difficulty faced by customers in securing travel approvals have shifted its engagement strategy towards regional hubs.

“Our vision is that ASEAN as a hub is a great opportunity to bring customers from countries like Thailand and Indonesia into Singapore,” he said. “It wasn’t because we have a unique strategy just for ASEAN now, but it was the right time for us to focus on this particular region using Singapore as a hub.”