Storage stack layers and players going into 2025

Analysis: Right now, the two dominant storage demand and development drivers are cyber-resilience and security on the one hand, and AI training and inference on the other.

The IT storage picture at the start of 2025 is vibrant and healthy with developments ongoing at all levels of the storage stack, driven by demands for more memory, more and larger SSDs, higher-capacity disk drives, better data serving to GPUs, and preparation for AI-driven analysis. We also see improved data protection and security and the ongoing promotion of object storage to higher-performing access for AI training and inference.

Let’s step back for a second and ask what actually constitutes IT storage and what it is for. The second question is easier to answer. Storage exists to supply data for applications running in servers or other host processors and to store the data these applications produce. Everything that uses stored data is an application in this sense.

We can envisage IT storage as a stack of layers, from basic recording media types at the lowest level and running up through devices that package this media into drives, next-level devices that package these drives into usable hardware systems, such as SANs and filers, the software that controls these systems, and then upper-level software that presents storage as a protocol and API-accessed facility to applications.

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