NetApp CEO George Kurian: ‘AI transformation is a leadership and business transformation’ – but vendors are there to build the foundations for success

NetApp CEO George Kurian believes that despite the hype surrounding AI, achieving success with the technology still rests firmly on time-tested transformation tactics.

Speaking to ITPro at NetApp Insight 2026, the chief executive said that long-running adoption challenges with the technology show that it can’t become a case of the tail wagging the dog.

Indeed, grounded leadership and clear cut strategies are still vital to successful adoption projects.

“Like all transformations, AI transformation is a leadership and business transformation,” he told ITPro. “It’s not a technology transformation. It’s enabled by technology, like the desktop computer or client-server computing, or the internet. But it is a business and leadership-led transformation.”

Kurian’s comments come in the wake of repeated studies highlighting the challenges faced by enterprises adopting AI over the last three years.

A study from MIT in August 2025, for example, found 95% of AI projects were failing. Similar research in January this year, meanwhile, found that half of agentic AI projects were stuck at the pilot stage.

The result is that executives have become increasingly irate at the pace of adoption, with firms failing to push projects from pilot to production. Analysis from PwC found just one-in-eight CEOs reported cost and revenue improvements.

Getting AI data ready

Enterprises have faced a series of common recurring pain points when it comes to AI adoption, all of which are typically centered around data quality and infrastructure capabilities.

Research from IDC identified data quality as a leading problem on this front, with more than half (52%) of companies highlighting this as “the most important factor for AI projects success”.

On the infrastructure side, IDC’s study also found seven-in-ten business leaders cited data silos as the “biggest challenges for AI adoption”.

NetApp is now focused intently on both these fronts, emphasizing the importance of both modern storage infrastructure capabilities while providing customers with an array of data management tools.

The firm’s ONTAP data management software, for example, is designed specifically to help eliminate data silos and improve visibility. The NetApp Console, meanwhile, offers users a centralized management tool to monitor and optimize infrastructure processes.

At NetApp Insight this week, the company unveiled yet more capabilities on this front, including new AI-powered features aimed at improving automated storage management.

New AI features will provide customers with predictive maintenance insights and automated remediation, for example, while users can also integrate their own large language models (LLMs) within the console.

Kurian told ITPro that while these capabilities are vital for enterprises modernizing their IT estates and ramping up AI adoption, the basic transformation fundamentals still remain crucial.

“I think with regard to data prep and data quality, there are capabilities like what we are introducing, but also that the LLMs provide to be able to solve those challenges better,” he said.

“It doesn’t mean that because the technologies are there that it magically gets solved.”

Kurian added that NetApp engages closely with customers on this front, in particular by showcasing use-cases and best practices by leading organizations.

“I think it is an organizational question, and so we work with our clients to show them what is possible and the best practices of the high-performing organizations that have been successful with it. And there are more and more of those.”

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