VAST Data is setting up a Cosmos community of customers, partners and practitioners to exchange VAST Data use case information.
This announcement comes as VAST also announces Nvidia GPU and NIM adoption in its Data Platform, plus bundling its SW with Cisco’s UCS servers and making it available in Equinix IBX co-location sites.
VAST says Cosmos aims to streamline AI adoption for its members by offering a comprehensive, interconnected ecosystem that facilitates conversation, shares use cases, and provides learning opportunities through labs, vendor showcases, and general AI research news. As AI usage is still in its early days, VAST says, Cosmos will help members stay informed and be supported.
Renen Hallak, Founder and CEO of VAST Data, stated: “With the VAST Data Platform at the center of this comprehensive, interconnected AI ecosystem of technology leaders and AI practitioners, Cosmos will help accelerate discovery, empowering innovation, and enabling the transformation of entire industries.”
There are three main claimed membership benefits, with the first being faster AI development and deployment helped by AI Labs with pre-sales-type demos of working AI reference architecture systems. AI stack component providers can partner in infrastructure building exercises and, thirdly, Cosmos will facilitate knowledge sharing by hosting interactive events with industry insiders and AI experts.
These, VAST says, will “allow participants to ask in-depth questions, receive tailored advice, and gain clarity on complex topics.” It sounds very much like a classic legacy mainframe and enterprise app supplier user group.
Early Cosmos participants include VAST Data, of course, Nvidia, Elon Musk’s xAI human-centered AI business, server vendor Supermicro, consultancy Deloitte, technology services provider WWT, Cisco, GPU-as-a-service supplier CoreWeave, WWT’s data center platform Core42, healthcare and tech venture capital business NEA, tech systems house Impetus, AI infrastructure supplier Run:AI, and datalake supplier Dremio.
Cosmos is a selling opportunity for product and service-supplying members, as Jeetu Patel, EVP and Chief Product Officer at Cisco, indicated: “We’re in a new era. With the promise and the complexity of AI, data centers, both public and private, must be reimagined to meet the needs of these new AI workloads. The scale of this change will only be possible if we collaborate across the technology stack. Cisco is working with VAST, NVIDIA and others to build modular infrastructure that allows organizations to quickly deploy these AI workloads, including the networks to support them.”
Ditto Stephen Brown, AI Factory Leader at Deloitte, commented: “A strong data foundation is critical for successfully scaling AI and we look forward to collaborating with members of the Cosmos community to help clients extract tangible value from their GenAI initiatives.”
Mitch Ashley, Chief Technology Advisor for The Futurum Group possibly went a tad over the top in his statement: “Cosmos is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for industry and technology leaders to garner the once unimaginable benefits from AI, which would be unachievable if we go it alone. It’s incumbent upon us to take bold steps like Cosmos that can reshape our future solutions possible with AI.”
Interested potential Cosmos participants can join the community here, register for a World Tour with sessions in US, European and Asia-Pacific region cities, and read a VAST blog. There is also a Cosmos web event on October 2.
