On-premises storage, infrastructure evolves to keep pace with AI | TechTarget

The era of artificial intelligence is upon us, and infrastructure providers have responded by updating their systems to support generative AI workloads.

In an August 2023 research study conducted by TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group, 54% of respondents said they expect to have a generative AI initiative in place in the next 12 months.

With AI, like many new or emerging workloads that require a level of infrastructure modernization, the initial expectation is that many organizations will turn to public cloud services. 

The value that AI delivers, however, is tied to the quality of the data it utilizes. For the modern enterprise, data is everywhere: in the cloud, on premises and at the edge. As the exuberance surrounding the business potential of AI starts to stabilize, organizations are shifting their focus to data security, privacy and locality considerations.

In other words, organizations want to make AI safe before they focus on making it valuable. As concerns about the risk of data use increase, organizations increasingly incorporate on-premises infrastructure into the AI conversation. As a result, the likely future infrastructure for AI-enabled workloads will be a hybrid environment spanning on- and off-premises environments.

Recently, my colleague published a column on the importance of rethinking enterprise storage in the AI era. It was based on several announcements from a recent Pure Storage event, Pure Accelerate, covering the company’s platform approach and its recent enhancements to Pure Fusion.

A key capability for hybrid cloud AI success is consistency. The AI era will require organizations to be more efficient in how they identify, manage and use data across location boundaries. On the infrastructure side, that means consistency of management, consistency of performance, and consistency of experience for both IT administrators and developer teams building AI-infused workloads. 

The bottom line is that there is not enough expertise in AI to go around, and consistency is one of the best ways of reducing the operational burden of running application environments that span multiple systems and locations. Pure Fusion and Pure Storage’s platform approach help to achieve that consistency.