AI Can Revolutionize Your Approach To Data Management

Data is being generated today at an unprecedented rate. Most of it is probably useless, but it still needs to be stored somewhere. Look at the use of data inside most organizations and it is clear how this escalation in data use is happening.

Around 16 million text messages are sent every minute. 361 billion emails are sent each day. In 2010 over two zettabytes of data was created globally. A zettabyte is a massive unit of digital storage capacity, equivalent to one sextillion bytes (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes), or roughly a thousand exabytes, a billion terabytes, or a trillion gigabytes. 

In 2020, over 64 zettabytes was created. The estimate for 2025 is 181 zettabytes. There are now around 19 billion devices connected to the internet and everything is creating more and more data.

All this data has created a problematic situation for cloud storage design. Deciding which data needs to be retained, or deleted, or compressed has largely been a manual process. Combine this with the legal requirement many companies have to ensure operational data is retained and some of the complexities are obvious.

This is where artificial intelligence (AI) can step up and help to manage the data overload.

First, AI can help by automatically classifying and compressing data. As this article in Cloudtech magazine explains: “This means identifying information that is high-risk, valuable, or redundant with minimal human intervention. For example, sensitive data can be flagged for encryption and long-term retention, while outdated or irrelevant files can be earmarked for deletion.”

AI can also help with regulatory compliance. Because the AI can be trained on rules, such as GDPR or CCPA, it can be relied on to more accurately handle sensitive data. Processes such as encryption can be automatically applied where the AI considers it is required.

It is important to take a new approach to data management. The growth in the amount of data being created and handled is exponential – manual processes will not be able to cope. AI is becoming essential for these tasks.

Most companies are already failing and are unable to restore their business critical data from backups. A study of over 600 companies in the UK undertaken at the end of 2024 found that more than half of the companies had been forced to use data backups to recover important data, but only 50% could do so successfully.

This disappointing result comes from a manual and disorganized approach. Cloud storage teams are often overwhelmed with the volume of data produced without clear guidelines on what is essential for storage, what needs to be encrypted, and what can be deleted or ignored.

AI can be a complete game changer for data management. This applies to all data that needs to be stored — not just for backups. With data management, AI is not just adding efficiency, it is becoming a critical tool — the only way data can be organized in a fast-moving environment.

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