Storage Stack Layers And Players Going Into 2025
Blocks&Files, Monday, January 6th, 2025
Right now, the two dominant storage demand and development drivers are cyber-resilience and security on the one hand, and AI training and inference on the other.
The IT storage picture at the start of 2025 is vibrant and healthy with developments ongoing at all levels of the storage stack, driven by demands for more memory, more and larger SSDs, higher-capacity disk drives, better data serving to GPUs, and preparation for AI-driven analysis. We also see improved data protection and security and the ongoing promotion of object storage to higher-performing access for AI training and inference.
Let's step back for a second and ask what actually constitutes IT storage and what it is for. The second question is easier to answer. Storage exists to supply data for applications running in servers or other host processors and to store the data these applications produce. Everything that uses stored data is an application in this sense.