At LEAP 2024, VAST Data made an announcement of establishing its regional headquarters in Saudi Arabia, solidifying their commitment to the region and aligning seamlessly with the ambitious goals of Saudi Vision 2030.
Recognising the importance of being at the forefront of this transformation, VAST is dedicating resources to further increase their presence and on-ground teams, to support innovation and growth.
With its focus squarely on constructing a data platform capable of matching the ambition of AI-era companies. The team’s recent collaboration with Run:AI aims to build a full-stack solution revolutionising AI operations on a large scale.
This comprehensive offering integrates compute, storage, and data management, empowering our customers to accelerate development, scale AI infrastructure, and reduce compute costs.
Through efficient orchestration and management of compute resources, Run:ai optimises the deployment of NVIDIA AI infrastructure across private, public, and hybrid clouds, enhancing AI project efficiency through dynamic workload scheduling and innovative GPU fractioning, thereby maximizing GPU allocation and utilisation.
In a conversation with edge/ Middle East Haider Aziz, Managing Director Middle East, Turkey and Africa at VAST Data, spoke about the company’s growth in the region.
Any other collaboration, and how are they going to help further grow your plans?
In addition to our strategic collaboration with NVIDIA, we are thrilled to announce a new partnership with SuperMicro, marking a significant step towards advancing our vision for AI computing. This comprehensive alliance is designed to offer an end-to-end AI solution, streamlining the development and expansion of large-scale AI deployments.
By leveraging SuperMicro’s expertise and cutting-edge technology, we aim to empower service providers, hyperscale technology firms, and large, data-centric enterprises with a robust and high-performance AI infrastructure. Together with SuperMicro, we are poised to revolutionise AI computing, shaping the future of data-driven industries and unlocking new possibilities for our partners and customers alike.
Tell us about VAST’s and NVIDIA recent collaboration on the development introduces a novel cloud architecture?
VAST Data and NVIDIA joined forces to pioneer a groundbreaking AI cloud architecture, poised to revolutionise data processing in the digital age. Leveraging NVIDIA’s BlueField-3 DPU technology, VAST Data’s innovative parallel system architecture seamlessly disaggregates its operating system into AI computing machinery, effectively transforming supercomputers into highly efficient AI data engines.
This collaboration underscores our commitment to delivering unparalleled performance, quality of service, and zero-trust security while optimizing space, cost, and power efficiency for the AI Factory. By embedding storage and database processing services directly into AI machinery, we are poised to unlock true linear data services scaling to hundreds of thousands of GPUs.
Tell us about VAST Data and its journey and operations in the Middle East?
VAST Data came into being amidst the boom in the data storage and artificial intelligence sectors, led by innovative companies that are redefining industry standards through the merger of advanced scalability, performance, and technology integration.
Since its establishment in 2016, the company has placed a strong emphasis on AI, acknowledging its pivotal role in today’s data-centric world. With its platform engineered to handle exabyte-scale data and recent funding driving its valuation to $9.1 billion, VAST Data is leading the charge in reshaping AI-powered data platforms and centres.
Early on, VAST Data directed its focus towards AI, but as data volumes surged, the company envisioned a future where traditional hard drives would be replaced by flash storage, recognising the shifting advantage from quantitative to qualitative, unlocking new capabilities.
What are the next steps?
Today, we stand at the intersection of sustainable and innovative solutions. We are eliminating hard drives and leveraging flash storage, redefining how data platforms help customers achieve a remarkable 90 per cent energy savings over a 10-year span, contributing significantly to carbon emission reductions while also establishing benchmarks for accessibility and efficiency.
We believe to partner is to validate, and the global alliances with HPE and NVIDIA solidify VAST’s architecture and technology, expanding the company’s access to new markets. In the Middle East too, we’ve forged partnerships with key players like G42 Cloud and other technology providers, underscoring our shared vision to reshape the landscape of data-intensive AI computing in the UAE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
