NetApp CEO George Kurian stresses the critical need for harmonised global AI regulations to streamline business operations and foster innovation, while highlighting India’s pivotal role as the company’s fastest-growing market in Asia.
Photograph: Kind courtesy Gerd Altmann/Pixabay.com
Key Points
- NetApp CEO George Kurian advocates for harmonising AI regulations globally to simplify business operations and compliance.
- Divergent regulatory frameworks, including AI-specific and industry-specific rules like DORA and PCI DSS, complicate business for companies.
- Policymakers should adopt a unified approach to AI, including data sovereignty, similar to global cyber resilience standards.
- India is NetApp’s fastest-growing market in Asia, with strong performance in BFSI, manufacturing, IT services, and public sectors.
- NetApp’s global capability centre in Bengaluru, with 4,000 engineers, is the company’s largest and a core hub for global R&D and innovation.
There is a need to harmonise artificial intelligence (AI) regulations across countries, as divergent regulatory frameworks complicate business operations by requiring companies to comply with multiple sets of rules, NetApp CEO George Kurian has said.
The Need For Global AI Regulation Harmony
Businesses are required to meet not only AI-specific regulations across different jurisdictions but also various industry-specific requirements, including the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), he told PTI.
“We would encourage policymakers around the <a href="https://absafricatv.com/world-cup-format-and-rules-2026-explained-for-india/” title=”World Cup Format and Rules 2026 Explained for India”>world to harmonise on a few things, just like the world harmonised on cyber resilience standards, which allowed the entire industry to actually deliver more capability,” he said.
He further urged policymakers to adopt a similar approach towards AI, including issues related to data sovereignty, to simplify compliance and enable businesses to develop and deploy AI capabilities more effectively.
Addressing Data Sovereignty Challenges In AI
“Having very different regulatory jurisdictions on AI complicates business because now you have to not only comply with one set of regulations related to AI, but also meet another set of regulations,” he said.
About sovereignty norms, he said, “I would say the Europeans are the most stringent in their sovereignty requirements, including requiring local models.”
Other countries, constrained by factors such as cost and reg on open-cessible to a wider section of users
NetApp’s Rapid Growth In The Indian Market
Kurian also said that India is NetApp’s fastest-growing market in Asia, with the BFSI, manufacturing, IT services and public sectors particularly central and state government departments as key drivers of the company’s revenue growth.
The San Jose-based data infrastructure company has also grown its global capability centre in Bengaluru, with the majority of global R&D processed out of the centre.
Bengaluru Centre Drives NetApp’s Global Innovation
With a team of about 4,000 engineers, the centre is the largest for NetApp and is core to the global innovation work for the company across technology areas.
“India has been the fastest-growing market in Asia, and we are always looking to grow faster,” he said.
NetApp’s global capability centre in India has become the company’s largest and has consistently grown faster than the rest of the business, the India-born CEO of the company said.
Kurian, who has been driving the company’s business growth as CEO since 2015, said NetApp is the number one player in India’s all-flash storage market and is giving its local teams greater scope to expand the business through investments by the company and its partners.
NetApp has a broad customer base in India, including large banks and financial institutions, central and state government departments, manufacturing companies and IT services firms, he said.
