The start of a new year presents an opportunity for businesses to take stock and evaluate the effectiveness of their data storage. As the world continues to generate record volumes of data, particularly through the evolution of AI capabilities, it is more important than ever for organizations to ensure they protect themselves against future storage challenges.
With growing data volumes, the industry will face two key challenges in 2025: a looming data shortage crisis and the environmental impact of data centers. However, there are actions that organizations can take to address these challenges.
Global Data Explosion Will Cause Data Scarcity Crisis
The world is creating data in unprecedented volumes and there are no signs of slowing down anytime soon. For reference, up to 400 zettabytes will be generated in 2028, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24%.
To put into perspective how large this amount is, consider how many grains of sand there are on all the beaches in the world; In theory, the latest research indicates that there are more than seven sextillion. Research by the California Institute of Technology equates a single zettabyte of information with exactly this: the amount of sand there is on the world’s beaches. Now, multiplied by four hundred, we can begin to understand how much data the world’s computers will generate and process in 2028 alone.
As the development of AI tools continues to mature and grow in scale globally, the value of data will increase, leading us to store more data for longer periods of time. However, the installed base of storage is projected to only grow at a CAGR of 17%, which is significantly slower than the growth in data being generated. Since it takes an entire year to build a hard drive, the disparity in growth rates will subsequently upset the balance between global storage supply and demand, causing a data shortage crisis.
Looking ahead, organizations are likely to become less experimental and more strategic in their use of AI. Addressing this looming storage crisis will require companies to begin developing long-term capacity plans now to ensure adequate storage supply and fully monetize investments in AI infrastructure.
Innovation in storage is essential to address the data center crisis and protect the planet.
As the global data boom continues unabated, it will eventually reach the point where data centers will be overwhelmed. According to the UK’s National Grid, energy demand from commercial data is expected to increase six-fold over the next 10 years. This increase in demand will clearly impact data center capacities and performance, leading to resource shortages.
However, there are a number of obstacles to addressing this issue, including financial, regulatory and environmental obstacles. These barriers will increasingly challenge and oppose the need for greater data center capacity and physical space.
According to CBRE, advances in AI are specifically expected to be a major driver of future data center demand. To manage the growing need for power density, high-performance computing will require rapid innovation in data center design and technology.
That said, it’s not just innovation in computing that is needed to help address this data shortage. Deploying higher areal density hard drives, which expand the amount of data stored on a given unit of storage media, can enable greater data capacity in data centers. Investing in these units can help data centers avoid the need to build new data storage sites, resulting in significant TCO savings and reducing the future environmental impacts of new centers.
Navigating the challenges in 2025
As we look ahead to the year ahead and the potential obstacles that may impact business operations, there are key actions organizations should implement now to stay ahead.
Enterprises should prioritize creating robust long-term capacity plans to minimize future disruptions caused by rapid global data growth. There are also huge benefits to investing in improved AI infrastructure and higher areal density hard drives, to effectively address the impact of increased demand on data centres.
As we wrap up this year and approach the next, and as organizations map out their business plans for 2025, it is critical that they consider implementing effective data warehouse solutions for the sake of their performance, bottom line, and bottom line. planet.
We have compiled a list of the largest hard drives and SSDs.
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