Owais Mohammed, Regional Lead and Sales Director, Western Digital – Middle East, Africa, Turkey and India
FUTURE TECHNOLOGY
Can storage systems scale with AI and digital transformation?
The future of storage is about more than capacity, it is about adaptability, efficiency, and intelligence. Unified platforms, hybrid architectures, and AIdriven management will define the next era of data storage. At the same time, sustainability and compliance will remain at the forefront, shaping both technology choices and operational strategies. Owais Mohammed at Western Digital summarises the top six trends.
The digital world is in the midst of a data explosion. According to projections, the global datasphere is on track to reach 181 zettabytes by the end of 2025, up from just 45 zettabytes in 2019. This staggering growth is fuelled by Artificial Intelligence, proliferation of Internet of Things, IoT devices, and the relentless demand for real-time analytics.
For organisations, the challenge is not just storing this data, but doing so efficiently, sustainably, and securely. As we look ahead, several key trends are shaping the next generation of storage systems.
1. AI and the growth of data
AI is no longer a niche technology. It is a primary driver of data creation and consumption. Machine learning models, Generative AI, and real-time analytics all depend on vast datasets, both for training and ongoing operation. The size of AI training datasets has grown exponentially, with median training sets ballooning from 42 billion data points in 2021 to over 750 billion in 2023 and this is set to increase further. This relentless growth puts unprecedented pressure on storage systems to deliver both capacity and performance.
To keep pace, organisations are turning to storage architectures purpose-built for AI. Technologies like NVMe over Fabrics, enable ultra-fast data transfer and low latency, which are critical for AI workloads that require rapid access to massive datasets.
Specialised solid-state drives, SSDs are emerging, offering higher input, output operations per second, IOPS and optimised data paths for AI applications.
At the same time, high-capacity hard disk drives, HDDs continue to play a vital role in supporting the massive storage requirements of AI workloads, providing reliable, scalable, and cost-effective solutions for long-term data retention and archival needs.
As AI continues to evolve, storage will need to be both high-capacity and highperformance, supporting the data-hungry demands of tomorrow’ s innovations while staying economically and ecologically
efficient. And the more data you have, the better the results.
2. Green imperative in data storage
The environmental impact of modern technologies is being discussed more and more. As data centres sprout up everywhere and continue to support growing workloads in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and the Internet of Things, IoT, they consume
When organisations deploy storage solutions at scale, one of the most important considerations is TCO.
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