Stress to plan for synthetic intelligence (AI) tasks has led IT leaders to maintain information that may solely be used as soon as and elevated the prevalence of single-use information that fills storage by no means to be accessed once more.
On the identical time, stress on prices and the will to function extra sustainably has turn into much more difficult as a result of IT departments can not establish information to delete, and in some instances it’s simply cheaper to maintain it eternally.
These are a few of the key findings of a survey by storage and information administration provider NetApp, which questioned greater than 1,000 information managers or architects within the UK in January 2025.
Within the survey, 92% of these questioned acknowledged the affect of single use information and need to mitigate its impact on sustainability, vitality use and storage capability, however see tackling it as difficult.
The survey discovered that companies count on their information footprint to develop by 50% because of AI tasks, though it additionally discovered that plenty of information stays unused.
Multiple third (37.5%) of enterprise information is believed to be unused usually, whereas one-fifth of respondents report that greater than 50% of their information is unused, which impacts information storage prices and vitality use, in addition to an organisation’s skill to effectively handle information.
Matt Watts, chief know-how evangelist at NetApp, mentioned: “British companies need to reap the advantages and alternatives offered by AI, whereas lowering the carbon footprint of their information. Tackling single-use information is a key piece of this puzzle, and companies should proceed to speculate extra in reviewing and staying on prime of their information estates.”
In the meantime, in accordance with the survey, almost one third (30.5%) discover it tough to establish what information to maintain and what to eliminate due to the information’s potential use for AI tasks sooner or later. Many additionally reported the sheer quantity of information they maintain is a barrier to cleansing up information shops, with 30% saying it’s extra economical to maintain information that to attempt to clear it.
Most enterprise leaders (85%) see information administration as a key instrument in efforts to cut back carbon footprint, whereas simply over 77% of organisations have tailored information administration practices to information necessities for AI.
The flexibility to establish information for deletion appears to be a problem. It is a core space of information administration during which organisations can establish information they not have to preserve in any respect, or which may very well be archived to more cost effective media within the cloud or elsewhere.
Throughout the survey, just below 27% mentioned they lacked the assets to establish whether or not information is beneficial or not, whereas the identical quantity cited a scarcity of price range or assets to handle information disposal.
That contrasts sharply with responses from SMEs, the place 24% don’t see information administration as a big pillar of organisational efforts to cut back information footprint. SMEs additionally positioned sustainability considerations third, with 24% – the biggest share – of them seeing discount of IT spend as the important thing cause to cut back single use information.
In the meantime, whereas 76% of UK companies have began emigrate some information to the cloud in an effort to satisfy sustainability targets.
The survey additionally discovered “micro-businesses” are least possible – 59% of these questioned – to see cloud migration as a instrument to satisfy sustainability necessities. That may very well be as a result of they function largely within the cloud already or that they contemplate their impact on the setting to be minimal anyway.
