- Seagate study says security and storage are top priorities for AI infrastructure
- Energy is a distant last, preceded by viability and LLM regulations.
- Discussions on AI energy use will continue until agreement is reached
The energy consumption of AI is becoming an increasingly hot topic, with industry stakeholders and critics expressing concern about the technology’s environmental impact.
But a recent Seagate survey points to more pressing concerns for IT leaders, stating that energy use is last on the agenda behind regulatory considerations, LLM viability and network capacity.
In particular, security and storage were among the key points of focus for business leaders going forward: nearly two-thirds (61%) of respondents who predominantly use cloud storage to host AI workloads said that its cloud-based storage will increase by more than 100% in the next three years.
Cost-effective storage is key
This increased focus on AI adoption is expected to lead to a surge in demand for data storage, with hard drives emerging as the “clear winner,” said Roger Entner, founder and principal analyst at Recon Analytics, which led to carry out the survey.
“The overall survey results point to an upcoming increase in demand for data storage,” he said. “When you consider that the business leaders we surveyed intend to store more and more AI-powered data in the cloud, it appears that cloud services are well positioned to take advantage of a second wave of growth.”
A key factor in this push is the cost-effectiveness of hard drives, according to the study, which offer better scalability and improve cost per dollar per terabyte.
Another factor contributing to the appeal of hard drives is data retention, according to the survey. Organizations that adopt AI typically retain data for longer periods of time to train and optimize AI models.
This long data retention practice plays a critical role in ensuring accuracy when training models, and 90% of respondents are already using AI and believe that retaining data longer helps improve results.
“With the vast majority of respondents saying they need to store data for longer periods of time to improve AI quality results, we are focusing on true density innovation needed to increase the storage capacity of each platter in our HAMR-based hard drives. ”Entner said.
“We have a clear path to doubling storage capacity per plate in the coming years.”
