As compute environments expand, the enterprise is at a critical inflection point where the evolution of storage, computing and networking are converging to redefine the capabilities of data centers.

As businesses navigate this shifting terrain, they are increasingly confronted with new challenges and opportunities, particularly around the rise of artificial intelligence and hybrid cloud environments.

Unpacking new-age storage for AI with Pure Storage’s Charles Giancarlo.

“Hardware and systems are cool again,” said Charles Giancarlo (pictured), chief executive officer of Pure Storage Inc. “A lot of this is being driven by the excitement around AI but also the recognition that what’s going on in data centers, what’s going on in the world of compute is accelerating at this point and creating a lot of opportunity for productivity for businesses and for people alike. What we’re seeing in the AI space is that it’s opening up multiple layers of opportunity.”

Giancarlo spoke with theCUBE Research’s John Furrier and Dave Vellante at the AI Infrastructure Silicon Valley – Executive Series event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the evolution of storage hardware in hybrid operating environments to drive enterprise value delivery, particularly in the AI era.

The evolution of storage: Virtual pods replace physical arrays

In the context of storage, the rise of AI is prompting a shift from traditional data replication methods to real-time data processing. The old model of copying data from production systems to dedicated data lakes or warehouses is being replaced by more integrated approaches that allow AI to work directly with production data. This reduces redundancy and costs while ensuring that AI models are working with the most up-to-date information, according to Giancarlo.

“If you’re going to be putting in inference and RAG, wouldn’t you rather be working on real-time data that’s sitting on the production environments and be able to get access to it for retrieval augmented generation?” he asked. “Which is simply that, ‘I think I came up with an answer, but I want to check with real data to make sure that I’m not just hallucinating.'”

AI is ramping up the pace of innovation across the board, forcing an evolution of storage so that data centers meet expanding user demands. Traditional storage solutions, which relied on physical arrays and complex, fixed environments, are giving way to more flexible, virtualized storage systems, according to Giancarlo.

“We’re creating an environment where on our arrays, all of that data appears as a pool of data,” he said. “It’s accessible by AI — what AI wants is access to data. Now you have to have the proper security mechanisms in there, role-based access controls, but then you want to allow it to have access to the data where it sits instead of having to be able to replicate it.”

Moreover, the adoption of flash storage and other advanced technologies is enabling companies to achieve greater efficiency, speed and cost savings. Pure Storage, for example, has leveraged its focus on raw flash technology to offer customers an “evergreen” model, where storage solutions are continually updated and refreshed without the need for costly replacements or migrations, Giancarlo explained.

“What does an evergreen model mean for us? Year after year and now decade after decade, we can consistently make a sold product new so that it never needs to be replaced,” he said. “Every few years, we replace every single component in that product, so that 10 years after we originally sold it to the customer, without the customer spending another dollar in capital, it looks like a product we had sold within the last year.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of the AI Infrastructure Silicon Valley – Executive Series event: 

Photo: SiliconANGLE