Conference Presentation, Fireside Chat
AI Is the New Operating Environment. Data Is the New Control Plane. | RAISE Summit 2026
- Workloads demanding extreme high-velocity data are predicted to emerge, with AI identified as a primary commercial driver.
- The competitive landscape for AI is expected to be defined by time, where the ability to rapidly set up and configure environments acts as a key differentiator.
- Current deployment lead times for new storage infrastructure are estimated at three to six months, extending to six to nine months or more without emerging technologies, whereas new solutions aim to reduce setup time by a factor of 70.
- The operating system market is projected to become exclusively Linux as high performance and scalability become mainstream.
- Hybrid systems utilizing hard drives and tape are anticipated to remain the standard and experience a resurgence, outperforming all-flash arrays in scalability and efficiency for aggregating limited hard drive performance.
- Hard drive scalability is expected to improve due to manufacturing methods that avoid competition for memory fabs, while flash technology may face reduced infrastructure investment as memory companies prioritize higher-margin HBM.
- The recovery timeline for the SSD shortage remains uncertain despite currently low investment levels.
- Reducing setup and deployment timeframes is expected to minimize wasted financial resources and human effort.
- Past efforts to fix legacy storage protocols are implied to have been insufficient to meet future demands.