Data is quickly becoming one of the greatest assets businesses own. When exposed to analytics, data offers insights that enable businesses to differentiate themselves from competitors. However, this need to capture and analyze data is a double-edged sword: while it helps businesses maintain a competitive edge, it also presents challenges in how to manage data growth.

In order to strike a performance-cost balance, IT departments require new levels of visibility into and control over their storage environments. They need a firm grasp of how much storage capacity is required today, as well as to support future needs, to prevent over- or under-provisioning of storage resources. Such inefficiency can cause application performance problems in the case of too little storage, or cost overruns if the business is oversubscribed to storage infrastructure.

This report will look at the “smart” storage management platforms. We will look at why such platforms are necessary, the evolutionary path from diagnostic analytics to AI, how analytics improve storage management, and where selected providers are in the journey to adopting smart storage platforms. We will also offer predictions about the future of AI in storage management.