'Data use will speed up as AI makes access easier'

Expensive upgrades have long plagued storage solutions. To get around the problem, Santa Clara, California-based Pure Storage offers consumers enterprise data flash storage solutions that "cost less, perform better and are easy to manage".

In an interview, John Colgrove, founder & chief visionary officer, Pure Storage, told Sudhir Chowdhary that the only reason people buy hard drives is they are cheaper than flash. In a year or two, the market will get to a point where flash will be cheaper, even in terms of the acquisition cost. Excerpts from the interview:

How crucial is data storage when it comes to IT spending by businesses? Everything in IT revolves around data - whether it's your customer data telemetry, data security cameras. I would argue that data storage is the most important part. There's no point in having graphics processing units (GPUs) to process your learnings when you don't have the data to feed them.

You also know that if you can't contact your customers because you don't have the customer data, you're not going to be in business. Therefore, data is at the heart of everything.