Data preparation is where AI strategies must start

Seagate is working with its partners to tap into the acceleration in demand for storage products that continues to be fuelled by the requirements of artificial intelligence (AI).

The vendor is recommending that its partners begin any discussion about artificial intelligence by scoping out the data demands across a customer’s business and their existing storage strategy. Significant numbers of AI projects have failed, with fragmented and siloed data one of the contributing factors.

Andy Palmer, UK channel lead for enterprise data and cloud solutions at Seagate, said there continued to be opportunities for storage specialists to assist the growing number of users wanting to pull the trigger on an AI roll-out.

“What I’m seeing from my partners is the growing realisation that preparing for AI is more difficult. It’s not a case of, here’s a model, there’s the data, bring it together, and boom, you’ve got AI,” he said.

“The vast majority of AI projects that customers start don’t end well and don’t deliver what they thought they were going to get,” Palmer added.

He said AI was a hot topic, and unescapably, customers were keen to adopt it to remain competitive, but partners needed to focus on the steps leading up to that moment to make sure the technology deployment worked.

“You’ve got to be very thoughtful about what you want AI to achieve for you, and bring along the stakeholders, including the affected users, so that you know the workflow you’re improving,” he said, adding: “Mainly they fail because data hasn’t been prepared properly.”

Palmer said the message for its channel now and heading into 2026 was to work on data preparation to get users in the right place to then go on to adopt AI.

“We’re now thinking about and talking about how Seagate and our partners can help overcome that. When it comes to the channel, there’s an opportunity, of course, to sell stuff, our stuff mainly, but there’s no point selling it if it’s then associated with failure.

“So, how do you orchestrate the data? How do you prepare the data that’s being stored? That’s what we’re starting to think about a lot more, and talk to our partners about, and go to the market as a solution stack, rather than a bunch of disparate products,” he said.

Palmer said those channel partners that understood the context that AI was being launched on top of would be the best-positioned.

“The channel opportunity is consultancy and helping these customers deliver. When they start to deliver, they will need to start buying more storage, more cloud, and these are things that we can certainly help with,” he said.

Palmer added that with the large number of channel partners engaged in AI discussions, there has been an increase in enquiries as some of those look to cover off the data and storage side of the story.

“The number of partners and the type of partners that we’re now engaging with is much broader than the traditional IT hardware reseller. They are much more managed service providers [MSPs]. They’re from the data security, cyber security realm, rather than just the IT market,” he said.

“We announced partnerships with Acronis last week, and we’re attending its event,” he added, to get in front of its MSP community.