{"id":52126,"date":"2026-01-21T09:39:31","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T09:39:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/?p=52126"},"modified":"2026-01-21T09:39:32","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T09:39:32","slug":"storage-trends-for-2026-how-ai-cyber-resilience-and-power-efficiency-are-reshaping-enterprise-data-centres","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/2026\/01\/21\/storage-trends-for-2026-how-ai-cyber-resilience-and-power-efficiency-are-reshaping-enterprise-data-centres\/","title":{"rendered":"Storage trends for 2026: How AI, cyber-resilience and power efficiency are reshaping enterprise data centres"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Eric Herzog, Chief Marketing Officer, Infinidat, projects 2026 to be a phenomenal year for enterprise storage as AI, cybersecurity, power efficiency and cost pressures converge to reshape how organisations design and operate their data infrastructure.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

2026 is projected to be a phenomenal year for enterprise storage. New alignments, convergence and unbridled growth are changing the way to think about storage infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AI and enterprise storage are now inextricably linked. Cybersecurity and enterprise storage are also converging, catapulting cyber-resilient storage to the forefront of the enterprise market. Power efficiency and enterprise storage are another critical pairing, with power savings becoming a new currency in data centres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CAPEX and OPEX pressures continue to shape enterprise storage decisions, as opportunities to reduce costs change the conversation about data infrastructure. Data volume growth and enterprise storage are equally inseparable, with one unable to thrive without the other. Embedded in each of these combinations is a trend worth exploring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The top five storage trends of 2026 set the table for what is gearing up to be a power-packed, AI-boosted, cyber-focused year for enterprise storage. These trends are derived from extensive input from customers, channel partners, analysts and technical alliance partners on a global basis. Here is a snapshot of the storage trends:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Storage Trend 1<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pivot to AI \u2013 The continued rise of AI applications and workloads to accelerate enterprise transformation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rapid adoption of Artificial Intelligence has had massive, direct implications for enterprise storage infrastructure. In 2026, AI deployments are expected to continue exponentially as enterprises seek to transform themselves with AI. Gartner forecasts that more than 80% of enterprises will have used AI APIs or deployed AI-enabled applications by 2026, moving AI technologies from a pilot phase into core enterprise operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This AI transformation mega-trend signals a pivot to AI-centric storage architecture, higher performance solutions for retrieval-based AI workloads and AI overlays that leverage existing infrastructure to maximise investments in enterprise storage. The AI blueprint poised to become the \u2018AI architecture of the year\u2019 for 2026 is the Retrieval-Augmented Generation workflow deployment architecture, which dramatically improves the accuracy and relevancy of AI models.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Storage Trend 2 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leap forward in cybersecurity \u2013 Cyber storage resilience to make safeguards more proactive and pre-emptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A shift is under way from traditional detection and response to proactive cyber defence and preemptive measures that make storage infrastructure truly cyber secure. At the same time, AI-driven cyberthreats are increasing at an alarming rate as attackers use AI to make attacks more dangerous and harder to detect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to PwC\u2019s 2026 Global Digital Trust Insights survey published in October 2025, 60% of business and technology leaders rank cyber-risk investment in their top three strategic priorities. Only 6% feel confident across all vulnerabilities surveyed. Cyber talent skills shortages also remain a major barrier to progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a result, enterprise cyber storage resilience and recovery must become part of comprehensive cybersecurity strategies in 2026. Proactive measures include cyber detection built directly into primary storage, while pre-emptive approaches include automated immutable snapshots to speed recovery after an attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Storage Trend 3 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rethink CAPEX and OPEX \u2013 Continued pressure on IT budgets to create opportunity for enterprise storage<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Information technology is no longer discretionary for enterprises. Gartner has projected that worldwide IT spending will total US$5.43 trillion in 2025, an increase of 7.9% from 2024. Global IT spending is expected to reach US$6.08 trillion in 2026, a 9.8% increase driven largely by AI infrastructure, software and devices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite this growth, pressure will continue to mount to make IT more cost-efficient and to reallocate budgets away from traditional infrastructure towards AI and other emerging technologies. Enterprise storage plays a key role in reducing CAPEX and OPEX through consolidation, power efficiency gains and higher capacity in smaller form factors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Storage Trend 4 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Power to the storage \u2013 Increasing demand for power efficiency to reshape data infrastructure<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Power demand in data centres will continue to rise in 2026 as organisations make room for power-hungry AI workloads. According to 451 Research, US data centres are on track to require 22% more grid power by the end of 2025 than a year earlier. By 2026, demand is expected to rise to 75.8 GW for IT equipment alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enterprises are therefore seeking power savings by adopting more efficient storage systems. With technology now foundational to business operations, better power management has become critical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Storage Trend 5<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capture more data, more unified storage \u2013 Unbridled growth of data to force the need to combine cyber, AI, power, CAPEX and OPEX and backup<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unbridled data growth will continue in 2026. Statista estimates that global data volume will reach between 230 and 240 zettabytes by 2026, up from approximately 149 zettabytes in 2024. This growth reinforces the other four storage trends and introduces an additional requirement for faster and more reliable backup and data protection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Backup often impacts application performance. Faster backup reduces this impact and enables near-instantaneous restoration when data needs to be recovered. In 2026, more organisations will prioritise rapid recovery to keep critical systems running.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Herzog, Chief Marketing Officer, Infinidat, projects 2026 to be a phenomenal year for enterprise storage as AI, cybersecurity, power efficiency and cost pressures converge to reshape how organisations design and operate their data infrastructure. 2026 is projected to be a phenomenal year for enterprise storage. New alignments, convergence and unbridled growth are changing the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":52127,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,16,43],"tags":[8770,7006,10488,10487,623,8939,1081,10489,10490],"class_list":["post-52126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-data-centres","category-energy","category-top-stories","tag-ai-storage","tag-backup-and-recovery","tag-capex-opex","tag-cyber-resilient-storage","tag-data-centres","tag-enterprise-storage","tag-infinidat","tag-power-efficiency","tag-unified-storage"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52126"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52130,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52126\/revisions\/52130"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}