- Seagate Study Says Security and Storage Are Priorities for AI Infrastructure
- Energy is far behind, preceded by LLM viability and regulation
- Debates over AI energy consumption will continue until a compromise is reached
AI energy consumption is becoming an increasingly hot topic, with industry players and critics expressing concerns about the technology’s environmental impact.
But a recent survey from Seagate highlights more pressing concerns for IT leaders, saying power consumption comes in at the bottom of the agenda behind regulatory considerations, LLM viability and network capacity.
Notably, security and storage were among the top points of focus for business leaders going forward, with nearly two-thirds (61%) of respondents primarily using cloud storage to host workloads. AI work said their cloud storage will increase by more than 100% in the next three years.
Cost-effective storage is essential
This increased focus on AI adoption is expected to drive an increase in demand for data storage, with hard drives becoming the “big winner,” said Roger Entner, founder and principal analyst at Recon Analytics, which conducted the ‘investigation.
“The survey results generally indicate an upcoming increase in demand for data storage,” he said. “Considering that the business leaders we surveyed intend to store more and more AI-driven data in the cloud, it appears that cloud services are well-positioned to ride a second wave of growth. »
According to the study, a key factor in this advancement is the cost-effectiveness of hard drives, which offer better scalability and improve cost per dollar per terabyte.
Another factor contributing to the appeal of hard drives, according to the survey, is data retention. Organizations adopting AI typically retain their data for longer periods of time to train and optimize their AI models.
This long practice of retaining data plays a vital role in ensuring accuracy when training models, with 90% of respondents already using AI believing that retaining data longer helps improve results.
“While the vast majority of respondents say they need to store data for longer periods to improve AI quality, we are focused on true density innovation needed to increase storage capacity of each platter of our HAMR-based hard drives. ” said Entner.
“We have a clear path forward to more than double storage capacity per tray over the next few years. »
