That AI is throwing things out of balance was foreseeable; but now the balance in the storage market is severely faltering – with massive consequences for the IT landscape. But from the beginning: The three manufacturers of enterprise hard drives – Seagate, Toshiba, Western Digital – overslept the sudden run on their products by gigantic AI data centers springing up. To meet their demand, they are now postponing all other customers until the year after next. These, however, being smart, are turning to QLC SSDs, thereby causing the next shortage.

Susanne Nolte beschäftigt sich mit Servern, Rechenzentren, Storage und Green-IT.

For context: Currently, the data center HDD market is about four times larger than that for enterprise SSDs. Their manufacturers cannot cope with the sudden influx and now have to pay three times as much for flash chips on the spot market, unless they have their own production or long-term contracts. For 2026, the flash market is already almost completely cleared out. In addition, hyperscalers are buying up large quantities of available RAM. Other manufacturers are outbidding each other in the hunt for the leftovers. The RAM providers are pleased and are reacting with gigantic price increases.

There is no end in sight. It will be 2026 before new production lines are created or existing ones are converted to newer, higher-capacity products. Even if the production of HDDs, SSDs, and RAM increases by double-digit percentages by 2027, the crisis will not be over anytime soon.

And afterwards? Just as Corona has overturned a lot – resources primarily from bottom to top – the storage crisis will also lead to changes, from which only a few will benefit. Currently, these are the manufacturers who are currently raking in record profits with record sales figures and prices. The secret winners, however, are likely to be the hyperscalers. They have been served first, and when resources are scarce, exclusively, by all manufacturers – as the history of the availability of GPUs or OCP hardware on the free market has shown.

One might joke that this is a fantastic marketing strategy by the hyperscalers: "You can’t buy hardware right now? Rent it from us." In fact, that would fuel the vicious cycle. But what are companies and institutions with their own data centers left with when the market is cleared out and new hardware urgently needs to be purchased? Because they cannot postpone all purchases indefinitely.

Large, influential players who have left their mark on the IT ecosystem have always existed. Compared to them, however, the hyperscalers, who also work closely with politics, now seem like the great lizards that dominated the Mesozoic era. No matter how you look at it, they are definitely at the top of the food chain.

(sun)

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This article was originally published in German. It was translated with technical assistance and editorially reviewed before publication.