Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2026. Read them in this 18th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
By Bill Andrews, President and CEO of ExaGrid
Data is growing and the challenges to back it up in the allotted backup window time frame, have fast restores and recoveries to keep users and the data center operational, the need to scale to keep up with the data growth, the need secure the data, and do this all at a cost that today’s data center can afford is constantly changing.
In addition, ExaGrid recently worked with the Enterprise Strategy Group on a research report about the current state of ransomware in 2025, which revealed that ransomware continues to be a top threat to nearly all organizations, who are facing frequent attack attempts, with only 1% of organizations surveyed reporting that they could recover 100% of their data after a ransomware attack.
As we head into 2026, ExaGrid predicts that:
- 2026 is the Year that Ransomware Recovery Drives Data Protection Decisions
Ransomware attacks continue to rise, disrupting business, impacting reputations and costing millions. In 2025, we saw a record number of customers realize that that they are more exposed than they thought they were. As a result, they now know that they can’t only depend on having ransomware prevention in place and that they need another line of defense ready if it fails. Organizations need an air gap copy, immutable data objects, and some form of delayed deletes or locking. In addition, they are seeking more AI automation features to sense early attack signatures to catch attacks early.
- Artificial Intelligence Rollouts Will Continue to Use a Large Share of IT and Service Budgets
There is no doubt that the AI cat is out of the bag, and all companies are running to take advantage in order to position themselves against their competition by making employees more productive and by analyzing data to make fast and strategic business, product, and other decisions. IT data centers and service providers will be challenged to find the balance between their core app, storage, networking, etc. infrastructure spend and their AI spend.
- SSD Market Share Will Pick Up Steam in 2026
In 2026, the conversion of HDD to SSD will pick up momentum as customers look for faster storage to accelerate user productivity, faster backups, faster restores, and lower power and cooling costs. The price of SSD is still much higher than HDD, but the gap continues to close and there is a point where customers will be willing to pay the difference for performance and power savings. There is no doubt that the future is SSD, and the only question is when does the big move from HDD to SSD occur? In 2026, we expect to see more SSD especially for the performance required for AI workloads.
ExaGrid recently released an AI-powered Retention Time-Lock for Ransomware Recovery feature: Auto Detect & Guard. The Auto Detect & Guard feature monitors all daily operational deletes, trains/learns, and creates patterns. If a delete request is outside of the pattern, the customer’s IT team is alerted and ExaGrid automatically extends the delayed delete policy so data in the ExaGrid Repository Tier is never deleted. If the delete was an operational delete, the IT team can clear the alert and ExaGrid will return to the original delayed delete policy. This provides two benefits: an early warning of a possible cyber attack where the attackers are trying to delete the backup data and ensuring that the backup data is not deleted on ExaGrid’s non-network-facing Repository Tier.
ExaGrid will announce major new product updates in early 2026, and remains committed to helping data centers and service providers stay prepared for what the future holds with its Tiered Backup Storage solution.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bill Andrews, President and CEO of ExaGrid
Bill has spent over 20 years growing ExaGrid from a concept to a visionary player in backup storage. With over 30 years of IT data center infrastructure experience, Bill has proven success in technical sales and marketing. Bill has impacted numerous high-growth companies, including Pedestal Software, eDial, Adero, Live Vault, Microcom and Bitstream. Bill is a graduate of Fitchburg State College and holds a BS in Industrial Technology. When Bill is not working, he enjoys boating, playing guitar and songwriting.
