AI, NVMe, and Hybrid: Synology’s Tony Wu Talks How Data Storage is Changing in 2025

With exponential data growth and increasing security requirements, IT departments are under constant pressure. How are modern technologies helping infrastructure leaders adapt to evolving landscapes? Tony Wu, operating systems and infrastructure expert at Synology, gave his expert views on three major trends that are shaping IT infrastructure in 2025: artificial intelligence, NVMe storage, and hybrid storage solutions.

A clear trend is the increasing automation of data handling, not least through the use of artificial intelligence. Storage solutions are evolving from mere storage locations to dynamic systems that can independently analyse data flows, access patterns, and security risks.

Especially in medium-sized businesses, we see a need to simplify processes while simultaneously increasing security. AI can play a crucial role in detection, for example, in the case of a ransomware attack. The use of AI for monitoring and data security is already in development, but the potential beyond that is enormous.

NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) is a game-changer for many companies. It offers greater speed with lower latency compared to SATA SSDs. This brings real benefits, especially for data-intensive applications such as virtualisation, video production, or database queries. Synology is implementing U.3 NVMe in our next-generation enterprise storage products to meet increasing performance requirements for data access.

Absolutely. Spinning hard disks are often unfairly labelled as obsolete, but they remain the most cost-effective solution for large amounts of data, for example, for backups or long-term archiving.

Wu: We get this question often, and there still isn’t a ‘one or the other’ answer because it ultimately depends on everyone’s individual requirements. There are use cases where the cloud makes perfect sense, for example, using it for off-site backup or for mobile teams. But many medium-sized companies have data protection requirements or don’t want to share sensitive data outside the company. Hybrid solutions offer a good middle ground here. At the same time, we’re seeing more and more companies returning to on-prem storage for a variety of reasons, including data protection or simply to reduce licensing expenses, cloud spend, and administrative overhead.

We believe that all three models, pure cloud, on-premises storage, and hybrid solutions, will continue to evolve in parallel in the business world. Companies will clearly align their storage expectations with the requirements of their specific projects.

The requirements are basically the same: security, ease of administration, scalability, and availability. And of course, all must be within budget constraints. Many IT departments today, even in large organisations, are staffed by a small number of people and need solutions that are easy to operate but still offer enterprise-level functionality.

We see our role in making high-end technologies easy to use and affordable. We offer technologies such as NVMe, immutable snapshots, storage for virtual machines, and AI-supported monitoring in a package that can be seamlessly integrated into IT structures. And we do this with a focus on clear management and reliable data storage, without being overly complex. Making advanced storage technology accessible to businesses and IT teams of all sizes is one of our biggest advantages.