Enterprises collect more unstructured data and pay more to manage it
A new report from Komprise shows that 85 percent of IT and data storage leaders are projecting an increase in data storage spend in 2026, while 74 percent are storing more than 5PB of unstructured data, a 57 percent increase over 2024.
To cope with these rising data volumes and outsized spending, enterprise IT infrastructure teams are looking to implement unstructured data classification. Survey respondents rank this as the top strategy to discreetly understand data for storage optimization, data governance, ransomware defense, security and AI curation needs. In parallel, classifying and tagging unstructured data is the top challenge in preparing unstructured data for AI.
The report reveals the top data storage priorities for the next year as cost optimization (64 percent), data preparation/classification for AI (61 percent) and cloud migration (54 percent). While top technical challenges for unstructured data management include classifying data for AI (58 percent) followed by moving data without disruption (53 percent).
Concerns about AI are high on the priorities list too, the top business challenge for unstructured data management is reducing data risk from AI (62 percent). The greatest data concern for generative AI is security, such as corporate data leakage, at 46 percent. Challenges in preparing data for AI include classifying and tagging (56 percent), compared to 41 percent in 2024.
“Unstructured data growth has reached a tipping point,” says Krishna Subramanian, co-founder, president and COO of Komprise. “IT organizations that do not take time to assess their data estates, growth rates, business priorities, security posture and IT resources may discover pains will outweigh the gains. Managing this data using the same methods, skills and tools of five to 10 years ago is no longer viable. It is time to reset unstructured data management strategies for the AI age.”
Future requirements for unstructured data management include data classification and tagging (61 percent) analytics and reporting (60 percent) and sensitive data detection (57 percent). The top skills gaps are AI data management (62 percent, versus 43 percent in 2024), cloud storage strategies (60 percent) and data security/compliance (49 percent).
You can get the full report from the Komprise site.
Image credit: Khakimullin/depositphotos.com
