The data storage market is projected to cross $777 billion in 2030, with a CAGR of 17.8%. But what are the driving forces behind this massive growth? In this article, we’ll look at the major trends in storage and industry predictions to see where the technology is headed.
Storage equipment is a critical infrastructure component for both enterprises and service providers. With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), the role of storage equipment has gained newfound significance.
Moreover, unstructured data (object data) is growing rapidly, and businesses want to leverage this data. In other words, object storage is gradually becoming a primary storage choice for enterprises.
But there’s more than just how and where enterprises will store their data. With pressures to think and act more sustainably, data centers must also rethink the environmental impact of data storage.
5 Storage Trends and Predictions for 2024 and Beyond
These are the top five trends that will impact data storage in 2024 and beyond:
Software-Defined All-Flash Storage
It’s the end of an era for the disk, as flash-based storage takes precedence with enterprises looking for more power-efficient and performance-centric solutions. Modern applications and data use cases require higher input-output operations per second (IOPS).
Traditional hard drive disks are unable to keep up with the workload demands. On top of that, their power efficiency is not comparable with that of all-flash storage. As a result, the latter is presented as a feasible solution for unstructured data, which companies may need to hold on to for a while.
According to one estimate, the all-flash array market is projected to grow at a CAGR of over 26%. In other words, adopting all-flash storage hardware will become widespread across small and large enterprise data centers.
Increasing AI workloads and the need for object storage are pushing companies to rethink disk-based storage. Software-defined flash-based storage solutions will gain ground in the market, thanks partly to more robust protocols like non-volatile memory express (NVMe).
Data Platforms
The distributed nature of data in today’s enterprise landscape presents unique challenges, primarily when processing the data. The hybrid cloud approach businesses adopted for flexibility and cost-effectiveness shows its drawbacks in the form of complexities.
The need for simplicity in managing data storage is bringing forth data platforms that essentially unify data residing in different places. Data platforms will likely become the go-to solution for companies with hybrid storage infrastructure, which stores critical data on-prem and the rest on the cloud.
As enterprises want to drive value from the data they collect, they want to store, access, and process it quickly. Therefore, investments in tools that enable optimized management and use of data are projected to rise sharply in the coming years.
A few vendors already offer data platform solutions to cater to the growing demand for data unification. VAST Data offers the VAST Data Platform, providing the infrastructure for the next generation of AI workloads and applications. It is a unified data platform, enabling the consolidation of legacy storage tiers.
Designed to bring all data and related services together, from databases to object storage to compute engine services, the platform inherently supports AI workloads like deep learning. The platform has built-in functionalities to structure unstructured data and unify it with existing databases, reducing the time it takes to sort object data.
Resurgence of On-Prem Storage
Since the emergence of the cloud as an efficient and affordable solution for data storage, a large swath of enterprises from virtually every industry have migrated their data to the cloud. While the cloud wasn’t necessarily the end of on-premise data centers, it dramatically reduced the need for it for many businesses.
On-premise storage is making a swift comeback. There are plenty of reasons for the return to on-premise from the cloud, but mainly, it’s the cost. For large enterprises with huge volumes of data, the cost-effectiveness of the cloud hasn’t materialized in the long run.
There are notable examples of companies leaving the cloud to create their own data centers on-site or going with a colocation provider. While moving data to the cloud is affordable, the costs quickly add up if you want to process the data or move it elsewhere.
The ‘pay for what you use’ model has been cost-effective for mid-sized organizations or those that experience high peaks often. But for enterprises that regularly need to store and compute large amounts of data, the cost-benefit evaporates quickly.
Then, there’s also the concern of security and privacy when housing data on the cloud. While significant security incidents with major cloud providers are rare, they’re not entirely immune to breaches. And cloud providers may need to share the data with legal authorities, if need be, without your consent.
Given the very public move of several companies from the cloud back to on-premise, it’s expected that other businesses may follow suit and bid farewell to the cloud.
AI-Powered Storage Solutions
While storage equipment and platforms will play a pivotal role in the adoption of AI for business, AI will also directly impact storage solutions. Vendors are empowering storage with AI capabilities for threat detection and better capacity utilization.
In other words, new storage solutions may have their own proprietary AI-enabled functions to optimize performance. More importantly, AI will significantly improve the built-in security functions of storage arrays to detect abnormalities in data and authenticate access.
The idea is to make data storage more resilient and add another layer of security that prevents breaches, especially ransomware attacks that often try to target backup storage.
Carbon-Neutral Data Storage
Data storage is a big part of a data center's carbon footprint, so much so that the industry’s impact on the environment is bigger than that of the airline industry.
Storing data and cooling the equipment in data centers consumes energy. As governments across the world tighten regulations on carbon emissions, data centers will need to rethink the energy efficiency of their storage infrastructure.
Data centers are already opting for more energy-efficient solutions like NAND flash storage, which is cost-effective and consumes less energy than hard drives.
But to go carbon neutral, data centers may also need to offset emissions and optimize energy consumption. Carbon credits may be used to hedge the emissions from data storage and overall data center operations. According to Morgan Stanley, the voluntary carbon offset market is expected to grow to $50 billion by 2050.
Vendors will also likely focus on innovations that make data storage more eco-friendly by using recycled materials and making equipment more energy-efficient.
Best Infrastructure Solutions for Data Centers
Data storage will experience dramatic shifts in its role in data center infrastructure. As enterprises want to leverage unstructured data and move processing close to the base, on-premise storage will likely be the go-to choice. Similarly, data platforms that offer consolidation will allow organizations more control over their data.
VAST Data is at the forefront of innovation, with state-of-the-art equipment and a unified data platform that enables enterprises to process data at any scale. VAST Data’s solutions can cater to your requirements, from containers to deep learning. For both files and object data, it’s the most efficient solution that eliminates the usual tradeoffs of working with various solutions for different data types.
