Predictions in 2024 from Nasuni 

From Nasuni Corp.

2023 was a year of much change, due to the continued impact of rising inflation, a rocky economy, and labor market challenges. 

Despite this, Gartner estimates that global IT spending is expected to grow 8%, which is a total of $5.1 trillion in 2024. Many organisations are implementing AI practices into their businesses, and tackling the challenges associated with the ever-rising influx of data.  

Prediction 1: AI bringing data stewards to the forefront of innovation  

Pete Agresta, CRO, Nasuni, comments: 

“AI has not only highlighted the true value of business data but has rather become the catalyst for companies to turn that data into an asset. As such, over the next 12 months, we’ll see an enterprise shift from storage-centric to data-centric. Smart companies will begin to transition from simply plugging in data storage to cleansing their data and leveraging it for productivity efficiencies, reducing costs and data-driven growth.

”To drive this transformation, the role of the data steward is making a lucrative transition towards data asset managers. Traditional asset managers have long been understood and appreciated by businesses, and are rewarded with attractive remuneration packages. The same can’t be said for the traditional data steward until now.

”Businesses know that failing to adapt data processes will result in losing competitive advantage in the year ahead. Thus, as the data asset manager role shifts and becomes critical to enterprises, the ability to command the marketplace will grow for data stewards and we could see salaries double in the next five years.” 

Prediction 2: Unstructured data growth paired with data cleansing can cut data storage costs, increase IT innovation, and unlock IT budgets  

Dave Grant, president, Nasuni, comments:

“Gartner predicts that unstructured data will increase by three times over the next three years. This is a worrying forecast for enterprises, but could be reduced to just one times growth.

”With businesses unable to maintain the budget required to manage that growing data demand (IT spending is set to increase by just 5.1% in 2023), leaders will come to the realisation that simply scaling storage infrastructure is not the answer. Cutting inessential data, like duplicated files, to cut costs will arise as the solution to exponential data growth in 2024.

”This can be achieved with two key processes: consolidating data and data cleansing, the process of getting rid of duplicate and old data and gaining a better understanding of proprietary data, and how it can be utilised. Cloud migrations are often an initial forcing function to get enterprises to consolidate data. Without consolidation and the cleansing of duplicate data files, data storage costs will skyrocket. The old storage guard vendors don’t want you to cleanse your data, since the more data used, the better for them by requiring you to purchase more infrastructure.

”Limiting exponential unstructured data to just one times growth through data consolidation and cleansing will mean that businesses won’t have to reallocate revenue-generative IT budgets just to keep up, and can instead unlock cash to spend on IT innovation.” 

Prediction 3: Responsible growth will be key for the tech sector during a challenging economic climate  

Grant comments: 

“The technology sector continues to be a beacon of light despite macroeconomic challenges. Driven by unprecedented AI innovation – the third major wave we’ve experienced in technology – the sector is well-positioned to lead us towards a more productive future.

”However, in the AI race, technology companies have rushed to expand aggressively into new markets for competitive advantage. In some cases, this has been done without regard to profitability. Over the last 12 months, these companies have been over-correcting their mistakes to balance the books and this is resulting in mass lay-offs – a trend which is set to continue.

”Success in the market in 2024 will come to the businesses that have prioritised responsible growth and continue to do so. These companies will be able to sweep up the growing talent on the market, get ahead of competitors and continue to ride the wave of the ongoing technology sector momentum.” 

Prediction 4: 2024: Brave new data-sharing world 

Chris Addis, VP sales EMEA, Nasuni, comments: 

“Businesses are finally realising the potential of their proprietary unstructured data and its role in delivering key insights to drive company organisational and market growth. A greater understanding of data is making this possible and creating competitive differentiation. Take the energy sector as an example – unstructured file data has always been the lifeblood of the industry (exceeding petabytes in size), which needs to be shared, accessed and protected effectively across users in many different countries internally and externally. For upstream operators, global data sharing means geologists can make decisions on where to drill in a faster time frame with less environmental impact. Energy companies need to embrace technologies that will enable them to make strategic decisions about where in the world they position resources, faster and more accurately, using a larger resource pool rather than in the past. 

“In 2024, it’s time to take the brave next step and share data and learnings with the market to supercharge industry development. More effort must be put into adding data to the ecosystem, to build that ecosystem up. By centralising, data can be shared with multiple industry-specific applications and SaaS platforms while adhering to local regulations and governance, helping organisations discover new trends and use these to bring innovation, such as AI breakthroughs, quicker to market. The value of data intelligence and innovative power that was previously siloed and locked up in their technology infrastructures is now being released and is transforming organisations’ capabilities and their overall value. With that, we can’t ignore the ransomware challenge that is still a pervasive threat to all businesses. Over the next 12 months, an increased ransomware threat landscape will add even more pressure to provide effective strategies and approaches that will offer guaranteed data protection and recovery globally, in faster timeframes and with less dependencies – making it imperative for organisations to choose their technology partners wisely.”