Rob Thomas

To get real insight from your data, you need to unify it. That was the key takeaway from NetApp CEO George Kurian on a recent Bloomberg Intelligence 'Tech Disruptors' podcast. He discussed how NetApp is pioneering solutions that help enterprises unify their data across different types, applications, and locations—a crucial capability in the AI era. It's a refreshing perspective: instead of just focusing on storage, the conversation is about building an intelligent data infrastructure that supports emerging AI workloads and drives the next wave of enterprise growth. #WhyNetApp Listen to the full episode to hear how George is positioning ONTAP and deep cloud partnerships to meet these new demands. Listen here:

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What happens when data meets hands-on learning? 🤔 For more than 30 years, the 49ers Foundation has supported STEAM education for underserved students. Now, with NetApp, students explore data analytics and technology careers through hands-on learning tied to real game day operations at Levi's Stadium. Watch the customer story video to see how modern data infrastructure supports education and opportunity at scale. @NetApp #AI #GenAI

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🚀 Exciting Acquisition News 🚀 Today marks another exciting milestone in IBM's history, with Confluent formally joining the IBM family. Now, with the power of Confluent, we can help clients move away from legacy batch processing toward real-time, continuous data streams, so they can act with confidence at the speed of the market. We're thrilled to welcome the Confluent team to a very exciting future for our clients, partners, and IBMers. Please read more here: https://lnkd.in/g2m-CR7N

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AI won’t save your portfolio. Smarter decisions will. Going to the 26th American Pharma and Biotech Project, Program and Portfolio Management Conference in Boston? Broadcom leaders Lance Knight, Chief Value Stream Architect, and Emma Price, Senior Product Marketing Manager, will explore how data science can truly enhance pharma portfolio decision-making. ValueOps by Broadcom helps organizations move beyond dashboards to connect strategy, investment, and execution for faster, clearer decisions that deliver real outcomes. If your portfolio needs more clarity and less complexity, let’s connect. ➡️ https://dy.si/qKGvbY2

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Today, DataStax officially joins IBM as our acquisition closes. This isn’t just a closing. It’s the beginning. Our mission remains the same -- empowering enterprises and developers to build and scale mission-critical applications. With this new chapter, DataStax and IBM will unlock the power of unstructured data and accelerate AI app development at scale. Why this matters: → With Astra DB, Hyper-Converged Database, and now watsonx.data, we will provide seamless access to both unstructured and structured data for production AI. → With Langflow and watsonx.ai, we’re giving developers the power to design, build, and deploy AI apps faster. → And with Apache Cassandra® at the core, we’re continuing to deliver scale, reliability, and openness at the heart of mission-critical infrastructure. To our customers: IBM’s commitment means a seamless continuation of your journey, with even more support, scale, and innovation behind your most critical data and AI initiatives. Let’s build what’s next, together. 🚀 https://lnkd.in/gNRSGq3V

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It’s one thing to talk about AI - it’s another to embed it into the heartbeat of an enterprise. As our CEO, Rohit Kapoor, shares from Davos, EXL was part of the first group of companies at World Economic Forum to lead the conversation on how AI is shifting from "what if" to "how exactly." I’m proud that EXL is leading the way and shaping how we think about making Agentic AI a real part of our workflows. We aren’t just talking about what might happen; we are building the ways for AI to take action inside everyday tasks. Check out the full report below to see how we’re turning AI potential into operational excellence. #Davos2026 #AgenticAI #EXL #DigitalTransformation #WEF26 #Innovation

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The INFORMS Business Analytics Conference is filled with valuable information for professionals active in “analytics without borders” focused on the ongoing challenge of improving organizational performance. Often, as Operations Research (a term I prefer) professional our attention is drawn to technical innovation. However, as the Analytics Framework and the Edelman presentations make clear – success (improving organizational performance) requires navigating the grey areas as agent of change. The presentation by Anna Nagurney, “Trade Wars and Game Theory: Who Wins, Who loses”, is one of the hidden gems at the conference that will provide the attend the critical skills to make a difference. To start, observe she stresses that supply chain is a network, not a chain. Networks come with immense complexity. Each individual component is straight forward; it is the relationships that drive the complexity. I am sure she will touch on the current disruption the middle east. 

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Powerful perspective from Kareem Yusuf Ph.D Yusuf on what it really takes to reach 50% ecosystem-led revenue: #alignment. Alignment of incentives to strategy. Products to segments. AI to real business value. And partners to growth, not just coverage. What resonates most is the shift from “channel as a route to market” to partners as force multipliers of volume and velocity. For us in EMEA, where diversity of markets, maturity levels, and partner models is our superpower, this focus on influence, SaaS, subscription, and land-and-expand is going to drive us further on the long run. Excited to build technology that works, with #IBMPartners who are all in, outcome-driven, and ready to lead in their segments. #AI #VolumeAndVelocity #PartnersAtTheCenter

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The agentic era needs more than powerful models. It needs systems of record, enterprise data, governance, and orchestration. That is not something you bolt on after the fact. It is built over decades, alongside the world's largest organisations. The frontier-model ecosystem is catching up to what enterprise customers already run in production. Great post by Madhav Thattai, EVP & GM Agentforce at salesforce.

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