AI Boom Fuels Data Storage Growth, But UK Firms Lag in Management

AI can make practically any company data relevant, but it has also caused data volumes to soar and organizations to pay more for energy and storage.

Single-use data that fills storage and is never accessed again has become more common as a result of pressure on IT executives to plan for AI initiatives, which has caused them to retain data that may only be utilized once. At the same time, IT teams are unable to determine which data should be deleted, and in many situations, it is just more cost-effective to retain the data indefinitely, making cost pressure and the need to run more sustainably even more difficult.

These are some of the main conclusions of a study conducted in January 2025 by NetApp, a storage and data management provider, which polled over 1,000 data managers or architects in the UK. 92% of respondents to the poll agreed that single-use data has an influence on sustainability, energy consumption, and storage space, and they wish to lessen this impact, but they believe it will be difficult to address.

Over one-third (37.5%) of company data is thought to be useless in general, while one-fifth of respondents say that over 50% of their data is idle. This has an impact on energy consumption and data storage expenses, as well as an organization's capacity to handle data effectively.

It appears that there is a problem with the capacity to identify data for deletion. In this fundamental area of data management, organizations can choose which data they no longer need to retain or which can be moved to less expensive media in the cloud or another location. Meanwhile, 76% of UK companies have begun moving part of their data to the cloud in an attempt to reach sustainability goals.