Storage GLASS-BASED
STORAGE AND THE FUTURE OF COLD DATA
For years, the storage industry has relied on familiar assumptions with falling prices, rising density, and steady gains under Moore’s Law. But Dr Steffen Klewitz, Founder and CEO of Ewigbyte, has warned that these foundations are eroding, and urged the channel to prepare for a fundamental shift in how data is stored, priced, and protected.
“W
Dr Steffen Klewitz, Founder and CEO of Ewigbyte
e have a gap,” Klewitz said. “We are using technology which is largely over 70 years old, and if you look at
LTO hard drives, for example, they will probably not be able to cover it.” He was, of course, referring to the mismatch between projected data growth and the production capacity of existing storage media. Even in optimistic scenarios, he noted,
manufacturing growth rates for HDD, SSD, and tape hover around 27 per cent. Data growth, by contrast, is expected to exceed 40 per cent annually, even before accounting for the additional burden of AI workloads. “AI will definitely add more,” he added. “We don’t know how much, but the amount of data you need to store for documenting your learning models is much more than the data AI itself generates.” Tis imbalance, Klewitz argued, will force the
industry to confront the end of a long-held belief: that storage prices inevitably decline. “Tis is Moore’s Law,” he said, “and it has worked for over 30 years.” But Moore’s Law itself, he noted, has already faltered in semiconductors. “Once you reach the atomic scale, quantum effects take over,
38 | January/February 2026
and the electronics you know in the analogue space will not work any longer – so Moore’s Law has come to an end because of the physical size of the chip. Te implication, then, is that the same applies in the storage space, where you need to think about whether we can actually store more data in the same volume.” Te consequences are already visible. Klewitz
pointed to analyses showing consumer prices for 10-terabyte hard drives rising, with enterprise- grade drives having 52-week lead times. “We also need to exchange the media in data centres every five to seven years,” he claimed. “We are creating, thereby, over 350,000 tonnes, minimum conservative estimate, of electronic waste. Tis can’t be efficient.” Beyond economics, Klewitz highlighted new
risks to data integrity. He cited threats ranging from AI-driven data alteration to geopolitical manipulation, as well as natural and man-made hazards such as solar flares and electromagnetic pulses. “If you ignite a nuclear warhead in orbit, you create an electromagnetic pulse, and within the cone of this pulse, all electronics are compromised – especially magnetic because you
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