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AI workloads are set to place substantially greater demands on enterprise storage, according to Seagate research covering more than 2,700 technology decision-makers. The survey found that 99% of respondents expect their storage requirements to increase within three years, but only 38% consider their organizations fully prepared for future demand.
Capacity expectations climb
Nearly seven in 10 respondents anticipate storage growth of at least 26%, while 32% expect their requirements to rise by more than 50%. Seagate's findings indicate that organizations increasingly view retained data as an asset for supporting models, applications and business decisions, rather than as an administrative burden alone.
That shift is reflected in the 98% of respondents who described storage as strategic infrastructure. The survey also found that 86% reported moderate or significant returns from AI investments, including 33% who said their organizations were already achieving substantial measurable financial or operational benefits.
Storage joins data quality as a barrier
Infrastructure readiness remains uneven. Storage was identified by 43% of respondents as a leading obstacle to broader AI deployment, while 53% cited data quality and readiness. Those concerns ranked ahead of compute availability at 27% and energy constraints at 24%.
The results suggest that expanding processing capacity alone will not address every constraint. Training material, active datasets, model checkpoints and retained outputs can create different storage demands across an AI system's lifecycle, requiring organizations to coordinate capacity, architecture and hardware planning.
Sustainability affects expansion
Environmental considerations are already changing infrastructure plans: 77% of respondents reported delays or revisions, including 36% who described major changes and 41% who experienced smaller postponements. Power consumption was the most commonly considered storage-hardware factor at 62%, followed by equipment lifespan at 55%.
Only 39% currently regard their storage operations as highly sustainable, although 61% expect to reach that level within five years. The survey does not establish that every organization will experience the same capacity growth or costs, but it shows that rising demand is expected across almost all respondents.
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