New NetApp Research Identifies Trade-off Between UK Business’ Sustainability and AI Ambitions

NetApp®, the intelligent data infrastructure company, announced new research which reveals that UK technology companies are struggling to balance sustainability and AI ambitions due to their current approach to data management. The overwhelming majority of UK IT leaders (92%) are aware of the negative environmental impact of single-use data and are keen to reduce emissions from IT operations. However, the competitive advantages of AI are compelling, and business leaders estimate that AI projects will cause their data estates, including single-use data, to grow by an average total of 41%.

Sustainability remains a top consideration and priority for companies, and the IT function is becoming more important in realising these ambitions. An overwhelming 85% of IT leaders see data management as the key to cutting their carbon footprint, with reducing emissions cited as the top driver for addressing single-use data.

Most respondents have measures in place to manage single-use data, like regularly cleaning their data estates, but these may be falling short of their desired impact, as an estimated 38% of data remains unused. This is compounded by UK technology companies feeling they have too much data to sift through and reporting that they find it more economical to expand rather than clean up their storage. Similarly, a quarter (26%) of IT leaders struggle to identify what to keep, or which data will be useful in AI projects. This is likely to intensify as AI accelerates data expansion.