Unstructured Data Growth and AI Challenges Drive Increased IT Spending

A new industry survey reveals a significant increase in both unstructured data collection and associated management costs, alongside escalating challenges related to artificial intelligence integration. According to the Komprise 2026 State of Unstructured Data Management report, 85% of IT and data storage leaders anticipate higher data storage expenditure in 2026. Furthermore, 74% of organizations are now managing over 5PB of unstructured data, marking a 57% increase since 2024.

Unstructured data is fundamental to modern enterprises across various sectors. For instance:

• Banks leverage customer emails and chat transcripts to enhance fraud detection beyond traditional monitoring.
• Hospitals utilize physician/nurse notes and medical images within electronic health records to improve early detection for high-risk patients.
• AI applications heavily rely on unstructured data. An e-commerce company, for example, might deploy AI to analyze social media comments and customer reviews to automate and refine customer support.

To effectively manage burgeoning data volumes and control rising costs, enterprise IT infrastructure teams are increasingly focusing on implementing unstructured data classification. This strategy is identified by survey respondents as a top priority for optimizing storage, bolstering data governance, enhancing ransomware defense, improving security, and curating data for AI initiatives. Simultaneously, classifying and tagging unstructured data poses the primary challenge in preparing data for AI.

The survey also indicates a strong intent among enterprises to boost investment in AI-ready technology and talent. This includes modernizing and upgrading data storage and management platforms, as well as hiring specialized AI infrastructure leaders.

Key Statistics from the Survey:

Challenges & Priorities

• Top data storage priorities for the coming year: Cost optimization (64%), data preparation/classification for AI (61%), and cloud migration (54%).
• Top technical challenges for unstructured data management: Classifying data for AI (58%), followed by moving data without disruption (53%).
• Top business challenge: Reducing data risk associated with AI (62%).
• Greatest data concern for generative AI: Security, specifically corporate data leakage (46%).
• Internal Visibility: Nearly half (47%) of respondents expressed concern about departments lacking visibility into storage spend and data usage.
• Primary challenge in preparing data for AI: Classifying and tagging (56%), a notable increase from 41% in 2024. Data governance and security concerns rank as the second leading challenge (46%).
• Future requirements for unstructured data management: Data classification and tagging (61%), analytics and reporting (60%), and sensitive data detection (57%).
• Top skills gaps: AI data management (62%, up from 43% in 2024), cloud storage strategies (60%), and data security/compliance (49%).

Strategies for 2026

• AI Budget Increase: 40% of organizations plan to increase their IT budget for AI, compared to 30% in 2024.
• Platform Upgrades: To meet security and AI demands, 64% of IT leaders will invest in upgrading data storage and management platforms, an increase from 53% in 2024.
• AI Strategy Task Force: 58% are forming internal task forces (IT, security, legal, etc.) to develop a comprehensive AI strategy.
• Staffing for AI: Nearly half of respondents anticipate adding staff, with a focus on hiring IT infrastructure leaders dedicated to building the AI foundation (53%) and engineers/developers with AI expertise (49%).

The accelerating growth of unstructured data has reached a critical juncture. Organizations that fail to assess their data estates, growth trajectories, business priorities, security posture, and IT resources risk having the challenges outweigh the benefits. Managing this data with outdated methods, skills, and tools is no longer sustainable; a paradigm shift in unstructured data management strategies is essential for the AI era.