20 Security, intelligence and more integrations take center stage for data storage innovation By Paul Speciale, CMO, Scality And just like that, it’s already December and we’re knee deep in planning for 2023. Wasn’t it just a few weeks ago that we were setting our sights on 2022? As we reflect on our predictions from this time last year and think about what the new year holds in store, a few things rise to the top. Scality doesn’t have an on-staff clairvoyant, but we’ve been in the data storage business long enough to recognize meaningful patterns and interpret their likely real-world impact. Our deep experience in this space — combined with the bird’s-eye view we have on new and emerging technologies as well as an understanding of industry trends and enterprise business needs — gives us a pretty good idea of what’s on the horizon for storage. So, without further ado, let’s dig into what we foresee happening in the coming year. Big Data Predictions 2023: Trends to Watch in the Future When it comes to IT buying criteria, security rules all – including for data storage. Storage projects will continue to feel the impact of supply chain concerns and economic difficulties in 2023, except for those that can demonstrate a clear return on investment for ransomware prevention efforts. It should come as no real surprise, but ransomware will be one of the biggest things on IT leader’s minds. In fact, according to Gartner, Inc., by 2025, 60% of all enterprises will require storage products to have integrated ransomware defense mechanisms. That’s up from 10% in 2022. Storage solutions have the chance to fill existing gaps in data immutability for ransomware prevention, multi-level security and quick business recoverability — and purchasing decisions are going to be made based on these capabilities. Additionally, technologies that can identify ransomware attacks using AI-based anomaly detection will gain popularity. Malicious software supply chain attacks will slow open-source adoption. Malware and ransomware threats are escalating in frequency and sophistication. Attacks now happen every few minutes, with each occurrence costing organizations millions of dollars and devouring countless IT resources. The price tag of such incidents reached record highs in 2022 — with the global average cost of a data breach now hovering around $4.35 million. As recent high-profile breaches show, many open-source software solutions are weak when it comes to security. Because open-source development and supply chains have a broader attack surface, enterprises will have to more thoroughly assess and vet these technologies before using them at scale. Unstructured search will get more intelligent. To optimize data analytics and mining of the trillions of unstructured data objects that they’ve collected in object storage systems, organizations will need intelligent data search techniques to further data insights. Especially when you consider that unstructured data will soon represent the bulk (80%) of all data. The introduction of numerous search tools and services by cloud providers like Amazon and others in 2022 was a positive step. But there’s still a need for intelligence that enables the crucial “aha!” moment to strike much more quickly. According to our forecast, unstructured data storage solutions will have mature search and query capabilities by 2023. Providers will integrate them with common access techniques while still ensuring enterprise-class security and auditing. Along with streamlining application development, this move will make object storage resources the only option for unstructured data storage and query. Green storage innovation will gain steam. An extended economic crisis and growing climate change awareness are converging in our time. Due to these factors, businesses will refocus their IT spending on products that can lower operational expenses by consuming less power while providing a return on investment. We’re already seeing an uptick in so-called green data centers, and Amazon recently announced its updated efforts to reduce water consumption in its data centers. On top of that, there’s the Storage Networking Sector Association’s (SNIA) Green Storage Initiative, which attempts to set standards for reduced power usage from large-scale data storage systems. These developments underscore the fact that green efforts matter to enterprise customers — a fact that’s going to put the onus on vendors to ensure their solutions are built to reduce power consumption through the smart use of resources and the latest low-power and high-storage-density systems. The result will be demonstrable power and cooling cost savings, lowering the storage industry’s environmental impact. Managed cloud services and object storage will grow more tightly integrated. Application developers will publish their own extended storage APIs for better data placement, monitoring, reporting and performance acceleration. Leading object storage providers will adopt this to offer even more enticing solutions and ROI in data security (backup and ransomware protection), AI/ML, and big data analytics to enterprise and mid-market customers. Also, we’ll see more collaborations between object storage vendors and managed service providers (MSPs) or big OEMs to deliver fully integrated, private-cloud S3 storage-as-a-service solutions, as customers value cloud-like storage services but prefer to use them from within their own data center infrastructure. Our customers have always prioritized data security, but in 2023, IT directors will assess every solution, including data storage, based on its capacity to shield data from multiple threat vectors. The data storage sector changed this past year to embrace developments in edge computing, hybrid clouds and AI/ML that allowed for greater data sovereignty and flexibility. The pace will pick up in 2023, giving IT staff access to long-anticipated capabilities that significantly boost productivity. Read our press release about Scality’s 2023 predictions here.
