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Companies can adapt to data growth by planning storage around workloads and access patterns—not by buying capacity only when systems fill. Classify data, set retention and deletion rules, place information on suitable storage tiers, and design for security and recovery. AI is adding pressure, but survey expectations do not establish a single growth rate or storage architecture that fits every business.
Why storage planning is becoming a business issue
AI is a significant reason companies are revisiting storage, but the pressure is about more than raw capacity: organizations need usable, well-managed data that applications can access and that can be recovered when something goes wrong.
A survey conducted by Recon Analytics for Seagate in May and June 2026 polled 2,712 enterprise technology decision-makers in the United States, China, India, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Japan. Seagate reported that 99% expected AI to increase storage requirements over the next three years, while 32% expected requirements to rise by more than half. These are respondents’ expectations, not measured growth across all companies.
The same survey found that 38% said their organizations were fully prepared for long-term AI data demands. Respondents cited data quality and readiness (53%) and storage infrastructure (43%) as leading AI deployment challenges; storage infrastructure ranked ahead of compute availability (27%) and energy constraints (24%). The results point to a planning gap: more capacity will not by itself make data ready, accessible, governed, or recoverable.
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Market spending is not a company growth forecast
IDC reported that worldwide external OEM enterprise-storage spending reached $9.9 billion in Q1 2026, up 22.9% year over year. IDC cited deferred refreshes and AI-related workloads as market drivers, alongside component constraints. Its forecast of 7.3% average market growth through 2030 concerns market spending, not the rate at which any particular company’s stored data will grow.
Start with data and workload decisions
Before selecting equipment or a cloud service, establish what data the business has, who is responsible for it, how it is used, and how long it must be kept. The goal is to match storage and protection to business need rather than treating every file as equally valuable or equally urgent.
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- This USB drive provides plug and play simplicity with the included 18 inch USB 3.0 cable
- The available storage capacity may vary.
Classify data and set its lifecycle
- Assign owners and classify information according to business value, sensitivity, and applicable obligations.
- Define how long each class must be retained, when it should be reviewed, and when it should be deleted. Indefinite retention increases the amount of information that must be managed and protected.
- Record which applications depend on each dataset, who may access it, and whether it must remain in a particular jurisdiction.
Map access patterns to storage needs
- Identify latency and throughput needs for active applications, analytics, and AI pipelines.
- Separate frequently accessed data from information kept mainly for reference, compliance, or long-term retention.
- Measure current capacity and utilization, then forecast by workload and retention policy rather than applying one assumed growth rate to the whole business.
Choose storage tiers and locations by use case
A tiered design can put data on different media or services according to how often it is accessed and how quickly it must be available. That is useful only when the operational complexity and full lifecycle cost make sense for the organization. Gartner’s public 2026 enterprise-storage abstract recommends platform-based models that embed intelligence and security in the data layer, with efficiency and resilience as goals. Its public 2025 roadmap abstract identifies data proliferation, AI, cyberthreats, and consumption-based infrastructure as forces changing enterprise storage; details beyond those public abstracts are not established here.
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| Approach | Consider it when | Assess before choosing |
|---|---|---|
| Higher-performance storage | Applications or workloads need low latency, high throughput, or frequent access. | Whether the performance requirement is real for the workload, how much data needs that level of service, and the cost of operating and protecting it. |
| Capacity-oriented storage, including HDDs | Large volumes are retained or accessed less frequently and capacity economics are important. | Access frequency, retrieval needs, resilience, energy use, lifecycle cost, and whether the workload can tolerate the performance characteristics. |
| Cloud or consumption-based storage | The organization values service-based capacity or needs a location that fits its applications and operating model. | Contract terms, data movement and retrieval costs, jurisdiction, connectivity, migration effort, and ongoing administration. |
| Hybrid or multi-tier designs | Different datasets have materially different access, performance, location, or recovery needs. | Whether the organization can manage policies consistently across locations, and whether added complexity is justified by workload and lifecycle economics. |
Western Digital’s May 2026 survey of 200 of its global customers and distributors across hyperscale cloud, cloud service provider, and enterprise segments included 80 respondents in relevant infrastructure or architecture roles. Among respondents with visibility into their storage mix, 70% reported HDD-majority infrastructure and 35% said HDDs represented more than 75% of total capacity. Respondents cited total cost of ownership, capacity, and scalability as HDD advantages. This vendor survey describes its sample, not a census or a recommendation for every buyer.
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- To get set up, connect the portable hard drive to a computer for automatic recognition no software required
- This USB drive provides plug and play simplicity with the included 18 inch USB 3.0 cable
- The available storage capacity may vary.
There is no universal cloud-versus-on-premises answer in the available evidence. Compare options using the same workloads and retention periods, including capacity, performance, operations, energy, migration, data retrieval or transfer charges, resilience, and location. Verify current provider terms; costs and capabilities depend on contract, geography, data movement, and operating model.
Build security and recovery into the design
Storage is not resilient just because data exists in more than one place. Decide which failures the design must survive, how quickly each service must return, and how much recent data the business can afford to lose. Gartner’s March 2026 public data-protection abstract highlights identity backup, ransomware survival, cloud-native recovery, AI-driven backup, and sovereignty requirements. These concerns make recovery and jurisdiction core architecture inputs, not final checks.
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- Easily store and access 4TB of content on the go with the Seagate Portable Drive, a USB external hard drive.Specific uses: Personal
- Designed to work with Windows or Mac computers, this external hard drive makes backup a snap just drag and drop
- To get set up, connect the portable hard drive to a computer for automatic recognition no software required
- This USB drive provides plug and play simplicity with the included 18 inch USB 3.0 cable
- The available storage capacity may vary.
- Define recovery-time and recovery-point objectives for important systems.
- Review failure domains and ensure backup arrangements are independent enough to address the threats the business is planning for.
- Control identity and access to backup systems as well as primary storage.
- Test restoration in practice and confirm that recovered data and applications meet business requirements.
- Check data-location and sovereignty constraints for primary data, replicas, and backups.
Include energy and lifecycle cost in capacity plans
Capacity decisions affect more than purchase price. Compare the full period of ownership or retention, including operations, power, migration, data movement, recovery, and the cost of managing multiple tiers. Measure actual utilization and energy use before expanding or relocating workloads; the survey evidence does not calculate savings for a specific company.
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1Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors2Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute3Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsIn Seagate’s 2026 survey, 77% of respondents said they had delayed or restructured AI infrastructure expansion because of sustainability or energy concerns, and 97% agreed that extending infrastructure lifecycles significantly improves sustainability. Those figures reflect survey responses, not a measured environmental outcome for every deployment. A company should evaluate its own utilization, equipment lifecycle, power, and retention requirements before deciding whether to refresh, extend, consolidate, or add capacity.
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A practical sequence for adapting
- Inventory: Map datasets, owners, applications, current capacity, utilization, access patterns, and locations.
- Set policy: Classify data and establish access, retention, deletion, jurisdiction, and protection requirements.
- Forecast by workload: Estimate growth using business plans, AI projects, and retention rules; distinguish evidence-based demand from scenario assumptions.
- Compare designs: Evaluate on-premises, cloud, and hybrid options against the same access, lifecycle-cost, resilience, and governance criteria.
- Pilot and validate: Test representative workloads, migration, access, retrieval, security, and recovery before broad changes.
- Review continuously: Track utilization, energy, costs, data growth, and restoration tests, then revise placement and retention policies as needs change.
What companies should take away
AI is sharpening the need to plan for storage, but companies should not translate survey expectations or market spending into an assumed company-wide growth rate. The durable response is disciplined data management: know what is being kept and why, match storage to access needs, compare lifecycle costs and constraints, and prove that important information can be restored. A company-specific assessment is necessary to choose the right mix of storage locations and tiers.
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