AI and storage

AI places heavy demands on all IT infrastructure. Storage is a key part of that infrastructure and must be specified to handle a variety of I/O access requirements, from lots of small files and known and regular use cases to as-yet unknown AI needs and large repositories of unstructured data.

News 26 Apr 2024
European Parliament approves platform worker directive

The approval of the platform worker directive gives member states two years to incorporate its measures into their national legislation, which includes provisions on how to classify the employment of gig workers and deploy algorithmic decision-making at work Continue Reading
Podcast 25 Apr 2024
Podcast: How to prepare your data for digital transformation

We talk to Chris Gorton, EMEA managing director at Syniti, about how to prepare data for digital transformation Continue Reading

News 24 Apr 2024

AI firm saves a million in shift to Pure FlashBlade shared storage

AI consultancy Crater Labs spent vast amounts of time managing server-attached drives to ensure GPUs were saturated. A shift to all-flash Pure Storage slashed that to almost zero Continue Reading
News 23 Apr 2024

Lords split over UK government approach to autonomous weapons

During a debate on autonomous weapons systems, Lords expressed mixed opinions towards the UK government’s current position, including its reluctance to adopt a working definition and commit to international legal instruments controlling their use Continue Reading
Blog Post 22 Apr 2024

SaaS: With AI, every which way you lose

The latest spending forecast data from analyst firm Gartner shows that spending on datacentres is set to increase 10% in 2024. This is largely being driven by hyperscalers riding the generative AI ... Continue Reading
News 18 Apr 2024

TUC publishes legislative proposal to protect workers from AI

Proposed bill for regulating artificial intelligence in the UK seeks to translate well-meaning principles and values into concrete rights and obligations that protect workers from systems that make ‘high-risk’ decisions about them Continue Reading
Feature 15 Apr 2024

Big tech’s cloud oligopoly risks AI market concentration

The oligopoly that big tech giants have over cloud computing could translate to a similar domination in the AI market, given the financial and compute resources needed to make the technology effective at scale Continue Reading
News 15 Apr 2024

Quickwit claims big advantage in log file search and index

When the logs are the data: Startup Quickwit claims late entrant advantage in log file search and index with bigger datasets and better analytics on reduced infrastructure Continue Reading
News 11 Apr 2024

Facial recognition to play key role in UK shoplifting crackdown

UK government will fund roll-out of police facial recognition across the country as part of its crackdown on shoplifting and violence against retail staff, but civil society groups say the government is attempting to police its way out of the cost-of-living crisis Continue Reading
News 11 Apr 2024

How GenAI use is evolving for Google Cloud customers

With more than one million developers now using Google Cloud’s generative AI systems to power their tools, Google customers have gone beyond experimentation and are now building their own agents Continue Reading
Feature 11 Apr 2024

Storage technology explained: AI and data storage

In this guide, we examine the data storage needs of artificial intelligence, the demands it places on data storage, the suitability of cloud and object storage for AI, and key AI storage products Continue Reading
News 11 Apr 2024

Government dismisses Lords’ concerns over facial recognition

UK government is claiming police forces’ use of live facial recognition is comprehensively covered by existing laws, in response to a Lords investigation that found police lacked a clear legal basis to deploy it Continue Reading
News 09 Apr 2024

Public worried by police and companies sharing biometric data

More than half of the British public do not feel comfortable with police forces sharing biometric data with the private sector, including facial recognition images, to tackle crimes such as shoplifting Continue Reading
News 09 Apr 2024

Greek government fined over AI surveillance in refugee camps

Greece’s Data Protection Authority has issued a €175,000 fine against the country’s migration ministry over its deployment of artificial intelligence-powered security systems in refugee camps after the watchdog’s investigation found ‘serious shortcomings’ with the roll-out Continue Reading
News 08 Apr 2024

UN adopts ‘landmark’ resolution on making AI safe and trustworthy

A UN draft resolution promoting the use of artificial intelligence in sustainable development and the protection of human rights was backed by over 120 member states Continue Reading
Opinion 28 Mar 2024

Facial recognition endangers us all without a clear legal basis

Technology researcher Stephanie Hare outlines the growing danger of the UK’s failure to legalise and regulate facial recognition technology Continue Reading
Podcast 28 Mar 2024

Podcast: What is distributed cloud storage and what are its benefits?

We talk to Enrico Signoretti of Cubbit about how distributed cloud allows customers to control their data in hybrid and multicloud storage and the workloads the company targets Continue Reading
News 27 Mar 2024

Lord Holmes: UK cannot 'wait and see' to regulate AI

Legislation is needed to seize the benefits of artificial intelligence while minimising its risks, says Lord Holmes - but the government’s ‘wait and see’ approach to regulation will fail on both fronts Continue Reading
News 26 Mar 2024

Alletra MP hardware changes see HPE orient arrays towards AI

HPE doubles controller nodes, boosts capacity with denser drives, cuts caches and builds in 100Gbps links to bring denser, faster storage aimed at all parts of the AI/ML pipeline Continue Reading
News 26 Mar 2024

GTC 2024: Storage suppliers queue up to ride the Nvidia AI wave

Storage supplier announcements at Nvdia conference centre on infrastructure integration, tackling the GPU I/O bottleneck and AI hallucinations by running Nvidia NeMo and NIM microservices Continue Reading
News 22 Mar 2024

Open Data Institute launches digital policy manifesto

The Open Data Institute has launched a policy manifesto ahead of the UK general election that outlines policies and issues it believes must be part of the political discussion around digital and data Continue Reading
News 20 Mar 2024

Inclusive approaches to AI governance needed to engage public

Technology practitioners and experts gathered at an annual Alan Turing Institute-run conference discussed the need for more inclusive approaches to AI governance that actually engage citizens and workers Continue Reading
News 19 Mar 2024

Vast targets AI checkpointing write performance with distributed RAID

AI checkpointing operations targeted by Vast Data as it touts QLC-based storage for AI workloads Continue Reading
News 18 Mar 2024

Spring Budget risks funding legally questionable police tech

Open legal questions around how UK police are using facial recognition and cloud technology could undermine the £230m investment committed in the Spring Budget to “time and money-saving technology” for police Continue Reading
News 18 Mar 2024

Cohesity: We won’t abandon NetBackup customers or force migration

CEO promises no forced migration to Cohesity and not to abandon any NetBackup product while building new leadership in artificial intelligence and security around Cohesity Gaia Continue Reading
Feature 15 Mar 2024

Creative workers say livelihoods threatened by generative AI

Computer Weekly speaks with various creative workers about the impact generative artificial intelligence systems are having on their work and livelihoods Continue Reading
News 12 Mar 2024

Industry partnerships and data key to better public services

Using public-private partnerships and improving the use of data are key to improving public services and the government’s ‘science and technology superpower’ ambitions, says digital secretary Michelle Donelan Continue Reading
News 12 Mar 2024

Hammerspace leverages smart metadata handling for AI/ML workloads

Software-defined storage maker separates metadata from files to provide view-from-anywhere file system visibility. It has now leveraged that for AI/ML workloads in Hyperscale NAS Continue Reading
News 07 Mar 2024

Government insists it is acting ‘responsibly’ on military AI

The government has responded to calls from a Lords committee that it must “proceed with caution” when it comes to autonomous weapons and military artificial intelligence, arguing that caution is already embedded throughout its approach Continue Reading
News 05 Mar 2024

Unexpected costs hit many as they move to cloud storage

A Wasabi survey of cloud storage customers finds more moving to the cloud, but they are experiencing busted budgets and unexpected fees, and expect big demands from artificial intelligence workloads Continue Reading
News 05 Mar 2024

Own targets SaaS backup and offers analytics insight

Targeting a growing market – SaaS applications that lack backup – Own offers backup, fine-grained restores and analytics on data stores that can bring business insight Continue Reading
News 04 Mar 2024

How ANZ organisations can address challenges in AI adoption

Pure Storage's global CTO Alex McMullan discusses the data and sustainability challenges in artificial intelligence adoption, which can be addressed by centralising datasets and focusing on data quality and management Continue Reading
Feature 28 Feb 2024

Storage technology explained: Ransomware and storage and backup

We look at ransomware attacks, and the importance of good backup practice as well as immutable snapshots, air-gapping, network segmentation, AI anomaly detection and supplier warranties Continue Reading
News 27 Feb 2024

Hycu uses AI to develop APIs for SaaS application backup

SaaS applications don’t usually come with built-in data protection, but Hycu plans to tackle that gap in the market with AI to generate the connectors needed to backup user data Continue Reading
News 21 Feb 2024

NasuniIQ brings visualisation of massive unstructured datasets

Global file system provider adds visualisation of massive distributed unstructured datasets to allow customers to analyse data usage and prepare clean training data for artificial intelligence Continue Reading
Podcast 14 Feb 2024

Podcast: What is the impact of AI on storage and compliance?

Start now looking at artificial intelligence compliance. That’s the advice of Mathieu Gorge of Vigitrust, who says AI governance is still immature but firms should recognise the limits and still act Continue Reading
News 13 Feb 2024

What will result from Cohesity’s Veritas acquisition?

The $7bn backup giant will leverage huge assets in enterprise customer base, compliance and governance intelligence, AI, R&D, and Kubernetes backup and storage Continue Reading
News 09 Feb 2024

Amazon defends facial-recognition tech sale to FBI despite moratorium

The FBI has confirmed it is using Amazon’s Rekognition image and video analysis software, but Amazon says it is ‘false’ to suggest this violates the company’s self-imposed moratorium on selling facial-recognition technology to US police Continue Reading
News 06 Feb 2024

UK government responds to AI whitepaper consultation

The UK government is considering introducing binding legal requirements for companies developing the most powerful AI systems, and has outlined a range of funding to realise the ambitions of its ‘pro-innovation’ framework for artificial intelligence Continue Reading
News 06 Feb 2024

Inside NetApp’s cloud and AI strategy

NetApp’s senior executives talk up the company’s efforts to support AI initiatives and deliver first-party storage services on public cloud platforms Continue Reading
Feature 02 Feb 2024

UK police facial recognition explained: What you need to know

In this essential guide, Computer Weekly looks at the use of facial recognition technology by UK police forces, including the points of contention around its deployment so far and where it’s heading next Continue Reading
News 01 Feb 2024

Welsh workers’ AI experiences shaped by uneven power dynamics

Workers in Wales are being negatively affected by the unregulated introduction of artificial intelligence into workplaces due to asymmetric power dynamics Continue Reading
News 31 Jan 2024

Seagate uses HAMR to hit 30TB in Exos hard drives

HDD giant Seagate unveils 30TB Exos drives with higher areal density, aimed at hyperscaler customers, with products at 50TB promised for 2028 in its roadmap Continue Reading
News 29 Jan 2024

Lords question legality of police facial recognition

Lords committee ‘deeply concerned’ about the rapid expansion of live facial recognition by UK police, which it says is progressing without any real oversight or accountability Continue Reading
News 26 Jan 2024

GenAI tools ‘could not exist’ if firms are made to pay copyright

AI firm Anthropic hits out at copyright lawsuit filed by music publishers, claiming the content ingested into its models falls under ‘fair use’ and that any licensing regime would be too complex and costly Continue Reading
Feature 25 Jan 2024

Cloud is not always the answer: Five reasons why

We look at why the cloud is not always the best choice, including for reasons of cost, application suitability, management, data protection and the needs of the business Continue Reading
News 23 Jan 2024

UN chief blasts AI companies for reckless pursuit of profit

The United Nations general secretary has blasted technology companies and governments for pursuing their own narrow interests in artificial intelligence without any consideration of the common good, as part of wider call to reform global governance Continue Reading
News 19 Jan 2024

AWS plans huge investment in Japan cloud infrastructure

Amazon Web Services plans to invest over $15bn into its existing cloud infrastructure in Tokyo and Osaka by 2027 to meet growing customer demand Continue Reading
News 10 Jan 2024

Scotland ‘sleepwalking’ to mass surveillance with DPDI Bill

The independent checks and balances over biometrics and biometric-enabled surveillance must be strengthened to prevent Scotland from sliding into a surveillance state along with the rest of the UK Continue Reading
News 29 Dec 2023

Top 10 AI regulation stories of 2023

From the UK government’s publication of its long-awaited AI whitepaper to its convening of the world’s first AI Safety Summit, here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 AI regulation stories of 2023 Continue Reading
News 28 Dec 2023

Top 10 technology and ethics stories of 2023

Here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 technology and ethics stories of 2023 Continue Reading
News 27 Dec 2023

Top 10 police technology stories of 2023

Here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 police technology stories of 2023 Continue Reading
News 21 Dec 2023

Top 10 storage stories of 2023

In this 2023 review, we consider if flash will thrash disk, what the Toyota outage shows about capacity planning, how to achieve green storage, the backup and compliance risks of AI, the lowdown on DPUs, and more Continue Reading
News 21 Dec 2023

Top 10 storage supplier strategy stories of 2023

In 2023, we looked at the top storage suppliers, their market share and how they set themselves for a future of hybrid cloud, containerisation and consumption models of purchasing Continue Reading
Feature 21 Dec 2023

Storage suppliers’ market share and strategy 2023

We look at the top suppliers in data storage by market share and run the rule over their storage offer, strategies for hybrid cloud, containerisation and as-you-go purchasing Continue Reading
Feature 18 Dec 2023

Pure Storage: Flash ‘startup’ that brings late entrant advantage

Storage profile: We look at Pure Storage, the youngest of the array makers, which comes to market with well-developed flash, hybrid cloud and consumption purchasing models Continue Reading
News 15 Dec 2023

Police defend facial recognition target selection to Lords

Senior police officers confirm to Lords committee that facial recognition watchlist image selection is based on crime categories attached to people’s photos, rather than a context-specific assessment of the threat presented by a given individual Continue Reading
News 12 Dec 2023

Top IT predictions in APAC in 2024

Generative AI will continue to leave its mark on many areas in business and IT, along with other trends such as sustainability, cyber security and smart factories that are expected to shape the region’s technology landscape in 2024 Continue Reading
News 11 Dec 2023

Panasas set for Mach.2 throughput with multi-actuator HDDs

Scale-out NAS maker claims to be the first enterprise array maker to use multi-actuator HDDs designed for hyperscaler architectures and which double throughput Continue Reading
Feature 11 Dec 2023

ERP’s storage requirements and options in the cloud

We look under the hood at enterprise resource planning and its databases, the storage needed to support ERP’s I/O requirements, block, file and object storage, and ERP in an era of hybrid cloud Continue Reading
Feature 05 Dec 2023

Dell EMC: Storage giant shifts gear to cloud operating models

Storage profile: We look at Dell EMC, the result of the biggest tech acquisition ever, and find a company well set for ubiquitous cloud operating models and as-a-service Continue Reading
News 29 Nov 2023

Aerodyne taps AWS to power drone platform

The Malaysia-based startup is running its Dronos platform on AWS to expand its footprint globally and support a variety of drone use cases, from agriculture seeding to cellular tower maintenance Continue Reading
News 22 Nov 2023

Nebulon upgrades SPU to Medusa2 with Nvidia DPU hardware

Nebulon aims to replace HCI with its OS on an offload card that it claims reduces server resource use by 25%. Medusa2 uses Nvidia DPU hardware and its own cloud control plane Continue Reading
News 20 Nov 2023

IT not ready for AI, Pure Storage survey finds

Storage, compute and networking hardware won’t cope without upgrades, and that often means total IT infrastructure overhaul Continue Reading
News 03 Oct 2023

How Pure Storage is supporting AI workloads

Pure Storage’s cloud-compatible and energy-efficient modular flash storage architecture is well-poised to address the data storage demands of artificial intelligence workloads Continue Reading
News 01 Aug 2023

Vast Data Platform aims at storage everywhere for AI/ML workloads

Vast Data to offer storage with data lake and warehouse functionality built in natively, in anticipation of a huge surge in AI/ML workloads and a need for ever-larger data stores Continue Reading
Podcast 24 Jul 2023

Podcast: Sizing data storage for AI/ML workloads

Artificial intelligence and machine learning workloads come with I/O profiles of different shapes and sizes. We talk to Curtis Anderson of Panasas about how best to procure and size storage for them Continue Reading
Feature 24 Jul 2023

Generative AI: Automating storage and backup management

We look at how generative artificial intelligence is being deployed to automate monitoring of repetitive tasks and report on enterprise storage and backup, but also the limits to its implementation Continue Reading
Podcast 08 Jun 2023

Podcast: Storage, backup, AI and data classification at RSA 2023

Much discussion at RSA 2023 about artificial intelligence, the risks to data protection, storage and compliance, plus risk and data classification, especially its impacts on access and data management Continue Reading
News 31 May 2023

Panasas to add S3 support to edge storage and cloud moves

Scale-out NAS maker – which specialises in large capacity for AI/ML and HPC – has come out of its on-prem shell and now plans further moves towards cloud-friendly object storage Continue Reading
News 28 Mar 2023

IBM Storage launched with backup appliance plan

Prosaically named brand will replace Spectrum products, while IBM rationalises offer for AI/ML, hybrid cloud and malware, which it sees as the backdrop to contemporary IT Continue Reading
Podcast 01 Sep 2022

Podcast: Storage the key bottleneck for AI processing

We talk to Panasas about the need for storage that can cope with delivering high volumes of small files for artificial intelligence with the throughput and latency needed to service costly GPUs Continue Reading
Podcast 05 Aug 2022

Podcast: How storage AIOps is revolutionising hybrid cloud ops

We talk to Tintri about storage and AIOps, which is the application of AI and machine learning-based software to monitor storage infrastructure to be able to detect patterns and predict failure, the need to upgrade, and so on Continue Reading
News 04 May 2022

PeerGFS to add AI/ML anomaly detection to distributed file system product

Peer will add AI/ML-based anomaly detection as it ramps up security protection in its PeerGFS distributed file management software, with Linux server support also to come in 2022 Continue Reading
Feature 08 Apr 2022

Storage requirements for AI, ML and analytics in 2022

We look at what is needed for artificial intelligence and machine learning, and the pros and cons of block, file and object storage to store and access very large amounts of often unstructured data Continue Reading
Tip 30 Dec 2021

The role of artificial intelligence in the future of content

AI will play a key role in the future of content, as it can simplify tasks, create new business apps and improve file storage. But these changes won't happen overnight. Continue Reading
News 10 Nov 2021

Vast Data: Big shifts promised for an AI future

Purveyor of Universal Storage says AI and GPU-based compute will dominate, and is set to benefit with its (relatively) cheap, deep and quick QLC-plus-Optane offer Continue Reading
Tip 28 Oct 2021

Understand your storage infrastructure management

Emerging technology, such as AI and software-based storage management systems, have simplified how IT manages its infrastructure. Explore the many components of modern management. Continue Reading
Feature 26 Nov 2020

IP surveillance: The storage it needs, on-premise and in the cloud

Surveillance is changing, with the evolution from simple streams of sequential images to the application of AI to video, as well as an increasing move to use of the cloud Continue Reading
Feature 18 Nov 2020

All-flash object storage makes its way into the enterprise

Object storage isn't just for backups and archives anymore. All-flash offerings are being used for AI, machine learning and analytics. See what types of products are available. Continue Reading
News 15 Sep 2020

Scality aims at high-performance object with Ring 8 all-flash

Object storage specialist – with file storage capability – aims at tier-1 use cases such as AI/ML, content delivery and some backup tasks with all-flash upgrade to Scality Ring 8 Continue Reading
News 01 Sep 2020

Pure aims at unified file and object and launches new QLC storage

Flash storage maker says unified storage in file and object is what is needed for contemporary analytics and AI workloads, while it launches a new all-QLC version of FlashArray//C Continue Reading
Feature 25 Aug 2020

Storage analytics: How AI helps storage management

We look at storage analytics products that measure key metrics in storage hardware, single-vendor and multi-vendor tools, and how AI-based storage management and AIOps is emerging Continue Reading
News 08 Jul 2020

Pavilion adds object storage to NVMe Hyperparallel Flash Array

Pavilion responds to customer demand for object storage to support AI/ML, big data analytics workloads with multi-controller NMVe flash storage architecture Continue Reading
Feature 08 Jul 2020

Decision points in storage for artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data

Artificial intelligence and machine learning storage is not one-size-fits-all. Analytics work differs, and has varied storage requirements for capacity, latency, throughput and IOPS. We look at key decision points Continue Reading
Feature 20 Mar 2020

Computational storage: What is it and what are its key use cases?

Computational storage brings the CPU to the storage and so boosts system performance by tackling processing tasks, such as near the edge or in AI/machine learning workloads Continue Reading
Feature 03 Sep 2019

Scale-out NAS hits the spot for large datasets, AI and machine learning

Despite the rise of cloud and object storage, scale-out NAS is a key choice for the big datasets increasingly prevalent in artificial intelligence and machine learning scenarios Continue Reading
Feature 16 Aug 2019

How to deploy NVMe flash storage for artificial intelligence

We run the rule over NVMe flash as a storage choice for AI applications and the key decision points in form factor and hardware specification Continue Reading
Feature 14 Jun 2019

AI storage: Machine learning, deep learning and storage needs

Artificial intelligence workloads impact storage, with NVMe flash needed for GPU processing at the highest levels of performance – and there are other choices right through the AI data lifecycle Continue Reading
News 20 Mar 2019

Pivot3 to target Azure, Google clouds and enhance AI/ML

Hyper-converged infrastructure maker Pivot3 plans to extend backup for its appliance clusters to additional public clouds and optimise service levels across storage tiers and cache Continue Reading
Feature 04 Sep 2018

SaaS HR a seedbed for innovations in AI, people analytics

The leading edge of 'intelligent' HR technology resides in SaaS, fueled by the cloud's computing power and storage. But getting machines to predict human behavior is challenging. Continue Reading
News 02 Aug 2018

NetApp AI storage packages OnTap all-flash FAS A800, Nvidia

NetApp follows Pure Storage's lead, adds Nvidia GPUs to its all-flash arrays to build a storage product designed for data scientists and others dabbling in artificial intelligence. Continue Reading
News 18 Apr 2018

IBM admits poor storage results but promises to do better

IBM’s first-quarter 2018 results shows failings in its storage business, while cognitive computing via Watson remains its main growth engine Continue Reading