Many businesses are redoubling their efforts in 2024 to reduce expenses through growing automation and enhancing efficiencies. These initiatives also include storage. In 2024 and beyond, it will be more crucial than ever to find efficiencies in the data center’s power management, data movement, and storage capacity delivery processes.

Not only are enterprises seeking to increase efficiencies, but vendors are also forming new alliances and partnerships to better serve user demands.Here are three storage-related trends for 2024.

CXL really shines

As businesses use more performance-intensive procedures related to artificial intelligence (AI), modeling and simulation, and big data analytics, workloads are getting denser. Compute Express Link (CXL) can help with that. Host processors and connected devices, including storage, may communicate at high speeds while maintaining a single memory space thanks to this open standard that is endorsed by the industry.

Each time around, CXL improves. The fastest transmission rate to date is included in the 3.0 specification. In addition to having excellent memory pooling, sharing, and support, it can oversee up to 16 switches.

Despite being memory-focused, CXL will positively and directly affect storage. Peer-to-peer read and write functionality, along with an overall increase in I/O bandwidth, make it speedier. Applications requiring a large amount of memory are supplied with it. Businesses can adopt performance-hungry processes and applications, such as those that make use of AI, machine learning, and other sophisticated computations, by integrating CXL into advanced storage.

Infrastructure evolution is accelerated by the AI avalanche

Artificial Intelligence (AI) was widely used in 2023 and is expected to continue growing in 2024 due to its extensive potential to transform company operations. According to Gartner, it’s really one of the areas where IT spending is most promising overall.

AI workloads require more energy and electricity to run, which can be challenging in data centers with limited power, space, and cooling resources. AI is also consuming a larger portion of IT budgets. Additionally, AI may lead to constraints in the areas of memory, processing power, and networking. Infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders will be forced by these issues to look for power and cost reductions, as well as power efficiency, elsewhere in their infrastructure.

AI will begin to seep into storage technologies, initially through the use of telemetry. Businesses may anticipate more accurate failure forecasts and quicker problem solving with AI-based telemetry analysis, which will save downtime and extend the life of storage systems. AI is also useful for detecting intrusions and determining whether alarms are legitimate or fictitious. In 2024, we should witness significant advancements in these kinds of capacities.

Sustainability gains considerably more significance

There is more pressure than ever to run businesses in a more sustainable manner. 75% of companies, as reported by Deloitte, have boosted their investments in sustainability in the last year, with an emphasis on utilizing climate-friendly or energy-efficient machinery, technology, and equipment.

A significant portion of this is also motivated by the need to adhere to the current Scope 1 and 2 emissions regulations. Scope 1 emissions are greenhouse gas emissions from sources that an organization owns or controls; scope 2 emissions are emissions that an organization indirectly causes from the location where the energy is produced or bought. Many are also getting ready to meet the new Scope 3 regulations, which address emissions resulting from assets acquired from third parties.