AI Budget Bloodbath: How Pure Storage Plans To Stop the Bleed

2024 was the year AI sent chief financial officers into cold sweats and IT leaders into panic mode. The AI gold rush burnt through budgets faster than a rocket-powered credit card. While everyone focused on GPUs and models, infrastructure costs, including storage, blindsided many.

Matthew Oostveen, Pure Storage’s chief technology officer for Asia Pacific and Japan, isn’t afraid to call out the industry’s most inconvenient truth. “The dirty little secret of most cloud-based storage solutions,” he says bluntly, “is that they tend to be wasteful and inefficient.”

The wasteland of wasted bytes

Imagine a world where half your data storage budget is essentially thrown into a digital bonfire. That’s not hyperbole — that’s the current state of enterprise AI infrastructure. But Oostveen sees a better way when companies and vendors focus on precision, optimization and ruthless efficiency.

“Technology such as deduplication and compression, always on data-reduction, intelligent tiering and lifecycle management comes standard with our platform,” Oostveen explains. And these aren’t just technical buzzwords either. We’re talking about potential storage cost reductions of more than 50%.

Meta’s AI Supercomputer: A case study in radical efficiency

Just look at Meta’s AI Research SuperCluster (RSC), a technological feat that pushes the boundaries of what’s possible in AI. It’s a petabyte-processing powerhouse designed to train next-generation AI models across hundreds of languages, analyze complex multimedia, and develop augmented reality tools.

But here’s where Pure Storage’s promise came into play. Meta needed storage that could handle astronomical data volumes while maintaining razor-sharp performance. Pure’s FlashArray and FlashBlade technologies delivered what Oostveen calls “unparalleled performance to rapidly analyze both structured and unstructured data.”

The most important aspect? By reducing storage infrastructure power consumption, Meta could redirect more energy to its GPUs, effectively supercharging its AI capabilities. It is a prime example of how the right storage helps companies maximize their AI investments and explore new frontiers.

Join the conversation. Watch Matthew Oostveen and leading APAC IT and data leaders at the Pure Leadership Series 4 on January 9, 2025 as they discuss how to stop the AI budget bleed and optimize your AI investments in the new year. Register now! More information, including registration details, here.

Avoiding the AI pilot graveyard

Not all companies have Meta’s deep pockets. Most are just dipping their toes into the AI waters. Even then, Oostveen has sane advice. “The industry is awash with [Proofs of Concepts] that are failing at an alarming rate,” he warns. This isn’t just a technical challenge — it’s an existential threat to organizational AI strategies.

Smaller companies with smaller budgets can’t afford to misstep or waste. Instead, Oostveen recommends to:

• Be hyper-selective about your AI pilots
• Invest deeply in projects with clear organizational benefit
• Build infrastructure flexible enough to pivot rapidly

“My first piece of advice is not to spread yourself too thin on the ground,” says Oostveen. “Be selective with what POCs and pilots you take on, but spend more on the projects you believe will benefit your organization.”

By following these guidelines, companies can increase their chances of AI success and avoid costly failures.

Overcoming the hybrid cloud paralysis

Hybrid cloud is another flashpoint for budget bleed. Going hybrid on AI is necessary unless you have bottomless corporate wallets to build and manage your data center for AI projects. However, security and complexity concerns have long paralyzed companies considering hybrid cloud strategies.

Oostveen’s solution? Look for a single operating system and control plane to create a more secure environment. “Despite a decade of tinkering,” he explains, “there still isn’t a clear path forward” — a reason why Pure Storage is investing heavily in its Fusion, Purity and Portworx products.

Pure Storage’s approach also includes immutable storage that protects data from creation, eliminating vulnerabilities from management errors and stale software updates. This is crucial in today’s increasingly complex AI landscape, when threat actors and data corruption can derail even the best-laid plans.

Preparing for the coming wave: LQMs

There’s still time for companies to optimize their infrastructure investments as they get on the LLM bandwagon. But there’s no time to wait. On the horizon are large quantitative models (LQMs).

Unlike their LLM cousins, LQMs will be built on fundamental scientific equations — physics, chemistry, computer science, etc. — offering unprecedented depth in technical fields. It addresses a major concern about today’s LLMs: accuracy and the ability to count fingers and letters.

“These models,” he predicts, “will leverage the same infrastructure as Large Language Models but require a different approach to training, demanding deeper access to bespoke datasets.”

The rise of LQMs presents both exciting opportunities for business efficiency. But it can also widen the gap between leaders and laggards, especially those already struggling with inefficient and wasteful infrastructure.

Reimagining the performance-cost tango

For data and storage leaders, the message is clear: The era of inefficient, bloated infrastructure is over. The future belongs to those who can turn bytes into business value with surgical precision.

This also means infrastructure building blocks, like storage, shouldn’t be a backroom consideration—they must become a strategic imperative. This is one reason why Oostveen and Pure Storage are positioning themselves not just as storage providers but as architectural partners in the AI revolution.

“The AI space can go in any number of directions from our current trajectory,” he says with excitement and strategic caution. “So build your AI strategy on an enterprise data storage platform that is flexible enough to move in a different direction at short notice.”

Image credit: iStockphoto/Pla2na