Companies Mentioned
Why It Matters
These developments signal accelerating AI‑driven data management, heightened security demands and a tightening memory market that will shape enterprise IT spending in 2026.
Key Takeaways
- •Ataccama tops Forrester data‑quality strategy scores
- •Coldago identifies Cohesity, Commvault, Rubrik, Veeam as leaders
- •Commvault adds immutable backups and compliance tools on Google Cloud
- •AI agents usage spikes 327% ; governance tools boost production
- •Samsung DRAM prices jump 70%, NAND up 100%
Pulse Analysis
Vendor rankings and product announcements this week illustrate how the data‑management landscape is fragmenting into specialized niches while still coalescing around a few dominant players. Forrester’s endorsement of Ataccama’s strategy and Coldago’s map of data‑protection leaders provide buyers with clearer criteria for selecting platforms that can scale to AI workloads. At the same time, the Coldago Gem List spotlights smaller innovators—9LivesData, InfoScale, Lucidity, StorWare and VergeIO—who may become acquisition targets or partners for larger ecosystems seeking rapid feature expansion.
AI integration is moving from pilot to production at unprecedented speed. Databricks reports a 327% rise in multi‑agent deployments and shows that organizations using governance or model‑evaluation tools launch up to twelve times more AI projects. Vendors such as Commvault, Descope and Druva are responding with immutable backups, agentic identity hubs and automated threat‑watch services that embed compliance and security directly into cloud‑native pipelines. These capabilities are becoming prerequisites for enterprises that must protect sensitive data while delivering real‑time AI insights.
Supply‑chain constraints are reshaping the hardware side of the equation. Samsung’s 70% DRAM price hike and 100% NAND increase, echoed by TrendForce’s forecast of near‑doubling contract prices, pressure IT budgets and accelerate the shift toward software‑defined storage strategies like those advocated by Lightbits Labs. Meanwhile, Micron’s $24 billion Singapore fab and Nvidia’s $2 billion investment in CoreWeave signal that capital‑intensive infrastructure will continue to expand, but only for players that can balance cost, performance and the growing demand for AI‑ready memory. Companies that align their roadmaps with these market forces will be best positioned to capture growth in 2026 and beyond.
Storage news ticker – February 2
Data trust company Ataccama has been named a Leader in The Forrester Wave: Data Quality Solutions, 2026. Ataccama received the highest score in the Strategy category among all evaluated vendors. Get the report here.
Research house Coldago released a new edition of its Modern Data Protection Map.
The 2025 edition selected and evaluated 20 vendors and identified four market leaders: Cohesity, Commvault, Rubrik and Veeam. Companies listed in alphabetical order are: Acronis, Arcserve, Atempo, Bacula, Cobalt Iron, Cohesity, Commvault, Dell, Druva, Eon, HYCU, IBM, Kaseya, Keepit, N‑able, NinjaOne, OpenText, Rubrik, Salesforce and Veeam. More info here. You can purchase the document (€7,990) by emailing [email protected].
Coldago Research has released its final 2026 Gem List, highlighting five standout companies selected this year. Since the program began, Coldago has identified a total of 85 companies. The Coldago Gem List is the outcome of an annual study that spotlights five players to watch in the months ahead. Companies are selected based on their vision, disruptive potential, product innovation, value proposition, business momentum, recent announcements, and execution – with a strong emphasis on technology and product advances. For 2026, the five companies joining the Gem group are: 9LivesData, InfoScale, Lucidity, StorWare and VergeIO.
Commvault expands Google Cloud integration
Commvault has added new capabilities that deliver immutable protection, rapid recovery of data and cloud applications, and archiving for compliance support:
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Air Gap Protect (AGP) – Enables immutable, indelible backups stored directly in an isolated, virtually air‑gapped location in Google Cloud, helping defend against ransomware and insider threats. A new compliance‑ready Archive Tier supports regulatory requirements and optimises long‑term retention.
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Cloud Rewind – Allows Google Cloud customers to rapidly and cleanly rebuild cloud applications. This advancement is critical because many enterprise workloads depend on these applications, even during ransomware events or major deployment errors.
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Compliance search for Google Workspace – Expands existing Google Workspace protection with advanced compliance‑search capabilities for Commvault’s eDiscovery offering, enabling faster location and export of relevant data (e.g., email messages and files) for audits, litigation, or investigations.
Personnel update
Commvault has hired Dale Smith as Senior Director, Channel Sales for North Europe. He joins from Juniper Networks, where he was UK&I Channel Director before becoming Senior Channel Director, EMEA in 2022.
AI agents adoption
While MIT found last year that 95 % of generative AI pilots fail to reach production, new data from Databricks (based on more than 20,000 customers worldwide) shows how businesses are actually making AI agents work in 2026. The 2026 State of AI Agents report reveals:
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Use of multi‑agent systems grew by 327 % in four months.
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77 % of customers used two or more LLM families (GPT, Claude, Gemini, etc.).
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Companies using AI governance tools put 12× more AI projects into production; those using model evaluation tools put 6× more into production.
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40 % of top AI use cases focus on practical customer concerns such as support, advocacy and onboarding.
Get the report here.
Descope updates
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Agentic Identity Hub 2.0 – An identity platform for AI agents and MCP servers that adds OAuth 2.1, tool‑level scopes, and enterprise‑grade policy enforcement. It integrates identity management, MCP auth, credential vaults, policy controls and logging to streamline AI agent deployment while maintaining security.
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Integration with Skyflow – The first natively integrated identity and data‑control layer for organizations building MCP servers. Descope provides authorization; Skyflow provides runtime data security, enabling user and agentic identity management together with data access controls. See the video demo.
Druva launches Threat Watch
SaaS data protector Druva introduced Threat Watch, a zero‑touch, automated cloud‑native service that continuously scans backup snapshots for dormant threats and indicators of compromise (IOCs). Highlights:
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No additional hardware or agents required.
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Uses a curated, customer‑configurable IOC library (CISA, Google Mandiant, Druva ReconX Labs) with support for custom IOCs via upload or API.
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Built on Dru MetaGraph, enabling real‑time data intelligence and integration with DruAI for risk prioritisation.
Read more here.
Vistaprint adopts Fivetran
Dutch SMB e‑commerce design and marketing partner Vistaprint is using Fivetran to power secure, automated data pipelines and reverse ETL. The company leverages AWS, Snowflake and analytics tools like Statsig to personalise experiences, optimise marketing performance and streamline operations. Reverse ETL enriches platforms such as Google and Meta with first‑party data for more precise targeting and improved ROAS.
Hammerspace leadership change
Tony Asaro has been promoted to Chief Business Officer at Hammerspace. In this expanded role, he will lead the global revenue organization—including sales, alliances, channel and go‑to‑market strategy. Hammerspace entered 2026 with strong sales momentum, a growing VAR channel (≈200 resellers), and international expansion across Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
IBM Storage Scale reference architecture
IBM introduced Storage Scale Multi‑Tenancy Reference Architecture v2.04, a guide for building secure, scalable multi‑tenant environments with IBM Storage Scale and Storage Scale System 6000. A blog post by Mathias Dietz (RAS Architect, IBM Germany) provides details. Download the reference architecture here.
Informatica CDO study
Salesforce unit Informatica released its annual global CDO study, revealing a “trust paradox” as organisations accelerate AI initiatives. The CDO Insights 2026 surveyed 600 data leaders. Key findings for Europe and the UK:
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Nearly seven in ten European businesses aim to become “agentic” by Q1 2026.
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In the UK, 61 % plan to start the shift to an agentic enterprise.
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A “trust paradox” exists: 61 % of European employees trust their organisation’s AI data, yet 96 % say staff need more training.
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77 % of European leaders say AI visibility and governance have not kept pace with employee AI use.
Kioxia announcements
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EXCERIA PRO G2 SDXC UHS‑II Memory Card Series – Available in V90 (up to 512 GB, 310 MB/s read / 300 MB/s write) for professional use and V60 (up to 512 GB, 300 MB/s read / 250 MB/s write) for everyday creators.
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UFS 4.1 sampling – New embedded memory devices with 4‑bit‑per‑cell QLC technology, offering 25 % faster sequential writes, 90 % faster random reads and 95 % faster random writes versus UFS 4.0. Available in 512 GB and 1 TB capacities, with a reduced package size (9 × 13 mm).
Lightbits Labs storage strategies
NAND flash shortages are now a fundamental challenge to data‑center growth. Carol Platz, VP at Lightbits Labs, outlines four software‑defined storage strategies to build resilient architectures that mitigate supply‑chain volatility. Read the full blog post.
LTO Show Podcast
Pete Paisley’s LTO Show Podcast is now available on YouTube. Listen here.
MariaDB on MySQL ecosystem
MariaDB Chief Product Officer Vikas Mathur commented on recent MySQL developments at Oracle:
“We are pleased to see the MySQL ecosystem evolving to include more of the innovations MariaDB has championed for years. Our goal has always been to push the boundaries of what’s possible in open source… While Oracle treated MySQL as a ‘little database’ side project, MariaDB has been busy building the future… MySQL users now face a clear choice: remain with a vendor that only innovates when forced, or join MariaDB, which is 100 % focused on what’s next.”
Micron wafer fab in Singapore
Micron has begun construction of an advanced wafer‑fabrication facility within its existing NAND manufacturing complex in Singapore. The planned $24 billion, 10‑year investment will eventually provide 700,000 sq ft of clean‑room space, with wafer output slated for the second half of CY 2028. The facility will complement Micron’s HBM advanced‑packaging plant, scheduled for CY 2027.
Nvidia & CoreWeave partnership
Nvidia and CoreWeave announced an expansion to accelerate the build‑out of more than 5 GW of AI factories by 2030. Nvidia invested $2 billion in CoreWeave Class A common stock. The collaboration will:
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Build AI factories using Nvidia technology.
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Leverage Nvidia’s financial strength to accelerate land, power and shell procurement.
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Test and validate CoreWeave’s AI‑native software and reference architecture.
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Deploy multiple generations of Nvidia infrastructure (Rubin platform, Vera CPUs, BlueField storage systems).
OpenAI scaling PostgreSQL
OpenAI scaled Azure PostgreSQL to support 800 million ChatGPT users, keeping a single primary instance for writes and adding nearly 50 read replicas with near‑zero replication lag. The system delivers low double‑digit millisecond p99 latency, five‑nines availability, and has experienced only one SEV‑0 incident in the past year.
MariaDB’s Vikas Mathur later blogged What if OpenAI used MariaDB instead of PostgreSQL?, highlighting MariaDB’s architectural advantages for high‑write, low‑latency workloads.
Pinecone Assistant n8n node
Vector‑database company Pinecone released an ETL function called Pinecone Assistant n8n node. It automatically handles file upload (PDF, DOCX, text, JSON, Markdown), chunking, embedding, vector search, query planning and reranking. Learn more.
Pure Storage DFMs
Pure Storage sales AE Daniel Gibney posted a LinkedIn article titled “When Flash Gets Scarce: How SSD Shortages Expose the Weak Links in Enterprise Storage”, discussing how Pure’s DFMs make better use of NAND chips than traditional SSDs, delivering more usable capacity to customers.
RAIDS AI launch
RAIDS AI, an AI‑safety monitoring platform, has entered commercial launch after a beta phase that began in October 2025. Co‑founded by Nik Kairinos and Brett Stonefield, the platform detects and alerts rogue AI behaviour in real time, helping organisations avoid failures, bias or regulatory exposure.
Samsung price hikes
Samsung raised DRAM prices by 70 % in Q1 and increased NAND flash prices by 100 %. More details are available on social media.
Sharon AI deployment
Australian Neocloud SharonAI Holdings announced the deployment of a 1K Nvidia B200 cluster at NEXTDC’s Tier IV M3 Data Center in Melbourne, under an existing Lenovo TruScale agreement. The deployment integrates VAST Data storage and expands Sharon AI’s GPU fleet (A40, L40s, H100, H200, B200). Plans for 2026 include B300 and GB300 systems.
TrendForce memory price forecast
TrendForce forecasts significant price increases for memory products:
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Conventional DRAM contract prices: 90‑95 % YoY increase (up from 55‑60 %).
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NAND Flash contract prices: 55‑60 % YoY increase (up from 33‑38 %).
Veeam senior hires
Veeam announced three senior appointments:
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Brandt Urban – SVP Worldwide Cloud Sales, promoted to Chief Business Development Officer (CBDO), reporting to CEO Anand Eswaran.
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Tony Colon – Chief Customer Officer (CCO), reporting to CRO John Jester.
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Michael Rau – VP of Worldwide Partners, reporting to John Jester.
Each will drive growth, customer success, and partnership strategies across Veeam’s portfolio.
Western Digital quantum effort
Western Digital is entering quantum computing. CEO Irving Tan disclosed on the Q2 FY 2026 earnings call a strategic investment in Qolab, aiming to advance nanofabrication processes that improve qubit performance, reliability and scalability.
SSD memory supply‑chain diagram
William Blair analysts produced an SSD memory supply‑chain diagram illustrating the flow from controllers and components through assemblers, enterprise storage arrays, to end‑market devices.
YMTC production acceleration
Chinese NAND fabber YMTC is pulling forward production at its Wuhan Plant 3, targeting mass‑production wafers in the second half of 2026 (instead of 2027). The plant will use 270‑layer 3D NAND (Gen 5). Competitors such as Samsung (286‑layer), SK Hynix (321‑layer) and Micron (276‑layer) remain focused on DRAM and HBM.
- YMTC held 10 % NAND shipment market share in Q1 2025 and 13 % in Q3 2025, aiming for 15 %.
More information: X post, WCCFTech article.
YMTC HBM development
YMTC is also moving into HBM production. While SK Hynix supplied HBM3E chips in early 2025, Chinese firm CXMT (ChangXin Memory Technologies) reportedly progressed to HBM3 development by mid‑2025. No public confirmation of success yet.
Read more here.
Phison CEO on YMTC
Phison CEO Pua Khein Seng believes YMTC could become one of the world’s largest flash suppliers by 2029‑2030. See the discussion in TechRadar Pro.
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