Here are some of the key trends and developments we'll be paying particular attention to over the coming 12 months.
AI was the dominant industry topic this year, and this trend won't change heading into 2025. What might change is the degree to which storage -- or, more accurately, data -- considerations play in overall infrastructure plans for AI.
Our research suggests a lack of quality data is a major barrier to AI adoption. As early adopters continue to deploy AI at operational scale, they will be looking for storage platforms that deliver the required performance. They will also have an increasing eye on efficiency, ease of use and enterprise-grade resiliency, power efficiency and other features.
Perhaps more importantly, it's also clear that if you don't understand your data, you will struggle to deliver an optimal AI strategy. The old adage "garbage in, garbage out" is especially relevant in AI with the risks around data hallucinations. Consider also the risks around inadvertently inputting personally identifiable information, sensitive, confidential or proprietary data into a model.
With data management overall generally a mess at most large organizations, the big question is whether AI will act as a forcing function for organizations to get their data house in order. With a healthy ecosystem of innovation, IT decision-makers have arguably never had as much choice. Vendors are investing in creating AI-aware storage platforms for unstructured data in particular. This innovation is wide-ranging, spanning data management, classification and other capabilities within the storage layer itself.
A wide range of storage players are battling for the massive installations that are up for grabs as large-scale model builders and specialists in GPU as a service continue to create new AI-related services. But the longer-term opportunity is in the more mainstream enterprise, and all eyes will be focused on understanding how they will begin to deploy AI at scale within their own or hybrid environments. That understanding will continue to evolve and will coalesce into a more clearly defined set of opportunities over the coming year.