By BS Teh
As generative AI and advanced tech reshape India’s landscape, businesses face data challenges in an increasingly distributed IT ecosystem. “With the growing volume of data generated by AI, cost-effective mass storage, particularly hard drives, is increasingly vital,” BS Teh, executive vice-president & chief commercial officer, Seagate, tells Sudhir Chowdhary in a recent interview. Excerpts:
What role can an effective data strategy play in the success of AI infrastructure?
Data is the fundamental fuel for AI. The quality, quantity, and usability of data can better-train the AI models to deliver clearer insights and more business value. According to a recent IDC report, 84% of enterprise data created in 2022 was useful for analysis, but only 24% of it was analysed or fed into AI or machine-learning algorithms. This means companies are failing to tap 60% of available data for analysis. That is lost business value. Without data, not even the smartest of AI models can help.
Another aspect to consider is saving the output of generative AI’s processing — be it text, image, or video. According to Gartner, by 2025, generative AI will account for 10% of all data produced, up from less than 1% today. Generative AI technology like Bard, ChatGPT, DALL-E and DeepBrain AI will create 100ZB of data over the next five years.
What data storage approach can firms adopt to create effective AI solutions?
Hard drives and SSDs complement each other in enterprise environments. This hybrid strategy balances performance and cost, ensuring sufficient storage capacity for evolving AI workloads. Businesses in India should look to the cloud for some of their AI workloads, and they will also want to store some of their data on their premises. Hard drives (which make up 90% of public cloud storage) are a cost-effective, durable, and reliable solution built for massive data sets. They can store the vast data needed to feed AI models for continuous training. The revolution happening now in hard drives’ areal density advancements means that the economy of scale that had been available to hyperscale data centres is also an option for companies’ private data centres. In India, where the AI market will be growing at the second-fastest rate of 20% over the next five years, mass capacity hard drives will remain both an enabler and beneficiary of these AI trends, working in harmony with flash storage.
How do you see India contributing towards Seagate’s overall growth?
As generative AI and advanced tech reshape India’s landscape, businesses face unprecedented data challenges in an increasingly distributed IT ecosystem. Seagate is well-equipped to meet diverse nearline capacity needs, with a focus on industry-leading 3+TB-per-platter, 30+TB drives now and up to 5+TB-per-platter, 50+TB drives in the future.
The author is EVP, chief commercial officer, Seagate
