Ban-Seng Teh, Seagate’s Chief Commercial Officer, explores why areal density technology is critical for a new generation of data centres.

Data is an invaluable asset for businesses as it drives growth, fuels innovation, and improves the customer experience. It is growing at an exponential pace and IDC predicts the global datasphere will be 291ZB in 2027.

As the volume and velocity of data increase, many businesses across a multitude of sectors are unable to tap into the full potential of today’s data-driven world. Not only do they capture and use just a fraction of the data they generate, but they also struggle with data storage.

As data continues to explode in the wake of AI productisation, enterprise data centres will need to find sustainable ways to scale against limited space, power, and budget.

Mind the (data storage) gap

As part of the AI boom, cloud and data centre customers alike have rushed to invest in and provide AI services to meet demand, initially focusing on building out compute and AI architecture. Once this infrastructure is established, both data storage and data management requirements will grow rapidly and can become overwhelming. To manage these challenges, data centre operators must quickly increase their data storage capacity.

Many manufacturers will look to boost their data storage capacity by expanding the number of discs in their hard drives as an immediate solution. In fact, it’s how most increase hard drive capacity in the short term. But with the direction data is headed — complete overload — this approach simply won’t be sustainable in the future.

Each disc in a hard drive requires many materials, including non-renewable resources. The more discs added, the more it costs to build, which has a drastic impact on the amount of floor space needed. Every extra disc also increases power consumption by up to 12.5% and when scaled in a data centre, that equates to massive spending on just power alone.

So how can enterprises increasing the amount of data each disc can hold? By boosting areal density – that’s the answer. Essentially, areal density means increasing the amount of data each disc can hold. And having fewer discs means less materials, and less power.

Areal density’s impact at scale

The push for higher areal density is fuelled by the exponential creation of data across multiple sectors, from enterprise to cloud data centres, necessitating more efficient and cost-effective data storage solutions.

Higher areal density allows for data to be packed more densely on storage media, enabling faster read and write speeds. This is a cost-effective solution which, in turn, translates to improved overall performance and responsiveness of data centres, ensuring that they can meet the demands of today’s data-driven applications and services.

Efficiency is a key aspect that underscores the importance of areal density technology in the context of modern data centres. With the ability to store more data in a smaller space, data centres can optimise their physical footprint, leading to reduced power consumption and cooling requirements. This not only contributes to significant cost savings but also aligns with the global imperative to build sustainable and environmentally conscious technology infrastructure.

Managing data efficiently

As we look to the future, the capacity to store, access, and leverage vast quantities of data will be integral to driving innovation and harnessing the full potential of the digital age.

Globally, businesses are currently dependent on having the right data centre infrastructure in place to harness the intrinsic value of all this available data. However, one of the key management challenges stems from the complexities of storing and managing scattered data. Residing in multiple locations, data often sprawls—spreading through endpoints, the edge, and multiple clouds. This means businesses are missing out on new opportunities and potential revenue.

Rather than look to immediately expand their data storage capacity, enterprise data centres should look to see how effectively their data is being stored. Ultimately, businesses need to ensure that the collected data is usable, whilst also managing the storage of collected data.

Attempting to capture all available data, however, would strain the existing IT infrastructure and increase costs. That’s one of the many reasons why enterprises must rethink data management. For example, identifying and classifying data at the start of its lifecycle enables faster data pruning, and that translates to lower costs.

The future of mass capacity

The future of mass capacity is happening now – and it is clear areal density technology is playing a pivotal role at scale in addressing the ever-expanding data deluge. This boost in areal density will help fuel hard drive product development and growth through the next decade.