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HCLTech and NetApp Expand Hybrid Cloud Storage Partnership to Accelerate Enterprise AI
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HCLTech and NetApp have expanded their collaboration with a new hybrid cloud Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS) offering designed to help enterprises scale AI, generative AI, and other data-intensive workloads.
The offering combines HCLTech's Utility for Everything (U4X) digital infrastructure framework with NetApp Keystone, a pay-as-you-go storage service. The model gives enterprises greater flexibility to scale storage, performance, and data services based on changing workload requirements.
Flexible Infrastructure for AI Workloads
As enterprises move AI projects from experimentation toward production, infrastructure flexibility and data readiness are becoming increasingly important.
The combined HCLTech and NetApp offering is designed to support AI development, deployment, and operations through HCLTech's AI Factory portfolio. It also enables organizations to run workloads closer to where their data resides, helping improve efficiency and time-to-value.
The consumption-based model is intended to reduce the need for large upfront infrastructure investments while allowing businesses to adapt capacity and performance as requirements evolve.
Strengthening Data Readiness and Governance
The expanded partnership brings together HCLTech's consumption-led infrastructure model and NetApp's data management capabilities.
The companies say the solution can help enterprises strengthen data readiness and governance while supporting hybrid environments that span traditional enterprise systems and newer AI workloads.
The approach builds on deployments across industries. A global food and beverage company, for example, used a consumption-based model to improve operational flexibility and reduce upfront investments, while a European telecommunications provider improved scalability and resilience across distributed environments while meeting regulatory requirements.
Accelerating the Enterprise AI Journey
The partnership reflects a broader shift in enterprise AI infrastructure: organizations increasingly need technology that can scale with AI workloads without creating additional complexity around data, storage, and governance.
By combining on-demand infrastructure with intelligent data management, HCLTech and NetApp are positioning the offering as a way for enterprises to move beyond AI pilots and build a more flexible foundation for production-scale adoption.
Alvaro Celis, Chief Partner and Ecosystem Officer at NetApp, said the collaboration gives customers access to NetApp's intelligent data infrastructure through a flexible business model backed by HCLTech's expertise. Rampal Singh, Senior Vice President, Hybrid Cloud Business Unit at HCLTech, highlighted the focus on helping enterprises scale AI in a pragmatic and efficient way.
About HCLTech
HCLTech is a global technology company with more than 223,000 employees across 60 countries. Its portfolio spans AI, digital, engineering, cloud, and software, serving customers across industries including financial services, manufacturing, healthcare, technology, telecom, media, retail, and public services. The company reported consolidated revenue of $14.8 billion for the 12 months ending June 2026.