The digital storage industry is experiencing a period of rapid evolution, driven by the exponential growth in data, advancements in AI, and the increasing demand for both performance and sustainability. As industries like AI, cloud computing, and big data continue to scale, the need for efficient, high-capacity storage solutions has never been more critical. Seagate is one of the strongest market player meeting the evolving demand with its extensive portfolio of HDDs and SSDs. In this exclusive interview, Rajeev Ranjan, Editor at Digital Terminal, exclusively interacted with Sameer Bhatia, Director of Asia Pacific Consumer Business Group and Country Manager for India & SAARC at Seagate Technology. They discuss the latest trends shaping the digital storage market, Seagate's cutting-edge solutions, and the company’s strategies for the future
Rajeev: What are the latest technology & market trends in the digital storage market?
Sameer: The digital storage market continues to evolve rapidly in 2024, driven by the advancements in technology, shifting market demands, and the growing needs for data management across various sectors. Key trends shaping the digital storage landscape include:
Data storage for AI and big data: The proliferation of AI and machine learning is fuelling the demand for specialised storage solutions capable of handling large-scale datasets and managing vast amounts of unstructured data such as text, images, videos and logs. This has driven the development of AI-optimised storage systems along with a growing need for secure, auditable and compliant storage solutions to support data-intensive applications.
High-capacity storage solutions: To meet the growing demand for high-capacity storage, especially for cloud providers and data centres building storage architectures optimized for AI inference, technologies like Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) are being adopted. These technologies enable hard drive to store more data at a lower cost, though with trade-offs in performance and data access speed.
Green and sustainable storage solutions: As environmental concerns grow, there is a strong emphasis on improving the energy efficient on storage solutions. With data centres scaling up to meet increasing digital demands, energy efficiency has become a top priority. Data centres are increasingly adopting renewable energy sources, improving cooling technologies and deploying more energy-efficient hardware.
Rajeev: Brief us about your current storage solutions portfolio (HDDs and SSDs), how your brand fared in the last 1 year and your target segments.
Sameer: Seagate’s storage solutions portfolio spans a broad range of hard drives and solid-state drives (SSDs), tailored to meet the diverse needs of various industries, use cases, and customer. Our offering delivers flexible, high-performance storage solutions that caters to market of all sizes, from consumers to large-scale enterprises and cloud providers.
As Seagate continues to leverage its leadership in areal density innovation, we have introduced the Mozaic 3+ platform, setting a new standard for storage capacity. This platform powers our flagship Exos 30TB+ product family, offering industry-leading capacity points of 30TB and beyond. As enterprises navigate exponential data growth, our solutions enable them to store data both on-site and cloud, unlocking significant gains in storage capacity, cost efficiency and carbon footprint reduction. Looking ahead, Seagate Mozaic 3+will also support a wide range of applications.
As data demand continues to rise across industries such as AI, cloud computing, Seagate remains well-positioned to deliver cutting-edge storage solutions that meet the evolving needs of its diverse customer base.
Rajeev: What are your USPs and the storage solutions you recently launched?
Sameer: Seagate Mozaic 3+ is a groundbreaking hard drive platform that incorporates Seagate’s unique HAMR implementation with a collection of other breakthrough nanoscale technologies, marking the culmination of decades of R&D and reinforcing Seagate’s leadership in areal density.
In the AI-driven era, where data is critical to success, businesses and enterprises must scale their data storage infrastructure to manage vast data volumes while meeting goals for cost-efficiency and sustainability. Upgrading the data infrastructure is no longer optional – it is essential for addressing the challenges of scale, TCO and sustainability.
With hard drives account for 90% of exabytes stored in the world’s largest data centres today, advancements in areal density are crucial in addressing these challenges. Data centre growth is not just about adding drives but maximizing efficiency. While adding more drives increases capacity, it also drives up capital investment, operational costs and resource consumption. A more efficient approach is to use denser hard drives, which deliver greater storage within the same space with lower power consumption – helping companies achieve sustainability goals and reduce operational costs.
Seagate Mozaic 3+ platform offers a compelling solution, enabling businesses to dramatically increase storage capacity without expanding their physical footprint. For instance, upgrading from 10TB of 1.42TB-per-platter PMR drives to Seagate’s 3TB-per-platter Mozaic 3+ platform Mozaic 3+ 30TB hard drives in data centre results in 3 times the capacity within the same footprint, 2.6 times better power efficiency per TB and 3.5 times reduction in embodied carbon per TB. At scale, this translates into significantly greater data capacity with much lower impact on space, power and overall cost.
Rajeev: To what extent SSDs are set to replace HDDs? What will be the future of HDDs?
Sameer: A common misconception about SSDs and HDDs is that SSDs will take over HDDs. While flash storage excels in high-performance and speed-critical applications, this does not diminish the vital role of hard drives. Consider the following advantages:
Hard drives have maintained a >6:1 price per TB advantage over SSDs
Hard drives have 9x better CapEx efficiency than NAND industry for exabyte-scale production
Hard drives consume 4x less operating power and have 10x lower embodied carbon per TB vs SSDs
In the AI era, data is the currency of business and hard drives are the vaults that store this valuable resources. Hard drives are indispensable in AI storage clusters due to their scalability, cost-efficiency and sustainability. As more AI models and applications scale rapidly, data growth is accelerating. IDC projects a 394ZB increase in global data by 2028, doubling in size over the next 5 years. This projection does not account for the potential growth driven by multimodal large-language models (LLMs).
Seagate’s analysis of IDC’s Cloud Infrastructure Index 2023 reveals that hard drives store 90% of exabytes in the world’s largest data centres. Additionally, 90% of enterprise exabyte workloads such as AI data retention, analytics, and backup – require high capacity but relatively moderate data processing times. These workloads are best suited for hard drives, thanks to their superior cost-per-terabyte advantage.
Recent advancements in hard drive areal density have further enhanced both AI performance and energy efficiency. These advancements have tripled storage capacity in the same footprint or deliver 2.6 times better power efficiency and 3.5 times reduction in embodied carbon per terabyte. Such improvements make hard drives not only essential but capital-efficient for managing AI exabytes in data centres, while supporting diverse workloads across industries.
Ultimately, this is not a zero-sum game. In data centres, hard drives and flash have always worked in synergy, with hard drive leading in capacity and cost efficiency. Together, they form a balanced, sustainable and efficient data storage ecosystem that will continue to evolve to meet the demands of future.
Rajeev: What is your supply channel structure? How do you train and motivate your channel partners?
Sameer: Channel partners are vital to Seagate, driving mutual business growth and success through shared goals and incentives. Seagate’s supply channel structure is strategically designed to foster profitable, sustainable partnerships by providing the tools, resources and support needed to maximize ROI.
Seagate is committed to building a strong and versatile partner ecosystem that thrives in the evolving digital landscape. We continuously refine our partner strategies using key performance indicators, such as partner engagement in training sessions and events, sales performance and network growth, ensuring mutual success for Seagate and our partners.
Rajeev: What are your plans for the coming 1 year? Where do you want to be after 3 years in India?
Sameer: The global surge in AI adoption is driving demand for storage architectures optimised for AI inference. India, as one of the fastest adopters, is experiencing rapid AI integration and exponential data growth. We believe areal density innovation, measured by capacity per disk, offers a game-changing solution for Indian enterprises, enabling them to manage their growing digital footprint sustainably while keeping operational costs and carbon emissions in check.
With the launch of Seagate Mozaic 3+, Seagate is not just providing storage but empowering enterprises to efficiently store, manage and scale vast volumes of data essential for AI model training and other critical operations. Seagate Mozaic 3+ platform underscores the indispensable role of hard drives in the AI-driven future.
Seagate is committed to continuing to advance innovation in areal density to deliver higher capacity per disk, improving data reliability and performance, and minimizing environmental impact – ultimately helping enterprise drive innovation and achieve long-term success in the age of AI.
Additionally, we will also strengthen our partnerships with our Indian channel partners, driving mutual growth and ensuring our storage solutions reach the widest possible market.
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