Summary
- The global datasphere will soar to 175 ZB by 2025.
- IRM's launch of InSight is connected to measurement of its customers' ROI in order to determine profitability relative to the costs, especially at a time of economic uncertainties.
- While the full migration of AI presents a challenge to the current job market, it will add at least 2.3 million jobs to the market by 2021.
- Iron Mountain plans to expand its geographical foothold from the current 14 operational data-centers across 13 economic markets and three continents.
Navigating the challenge of COVID-19 has forced many companies to embrace remote access to data by adopting document management software. Iron Mountain Inc. (NYSE: IRM) recently announced the launch of the InSight content management services platform. This program uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) operating on Visual User Interface on Google's (GOOG) Cloud Marketplace.
Thesis
Over the past three months, Iron Mountain's stock has risen by more than 9% as demand for digital data centers has soared due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The company's increasing acquisition of network ecosystems and the dynamic shift to data handling by AI/ML and robotics will also work to improve the stock price as countries seek to secure data after recent economic sabotage from the pandemic and protests.
AI and the data footprint
The International Data Corporation (IDC) anticipated that the growth of the global datasphere would soar from 33 Zettabytes (ZB) in 2018 to 175 ZB by 2025. At the same time, 49% of all the stored data in the world will be found in public cloud environments- such as Google's cloud marketplace.
As early as 2019, a survey by Gartner showed that 37% of the leading global organizations had incorporated AI in some form. Another survey in 2020 showed that in the next 12 months, 84% of the respondents would be focused on cyber-security, 37% on AI and 33% would automate their organizational processes using robotics.
Gartner also predicted that by 2024, 50% of all AI investments will be quantified and further linked to specific key performance indicators to assess return on investment (ROI). Thus, IRM's launch of InSight is connected to measurement of its customers' ROI in order to determine profitability relative to the costs, especially at a time of economic uncertainties. While the report estimates that 1.8 million jobs will be lost by 2020 as a result of AI, a new net-job balance of 2.3 million will be added to the employment grid in the same period. In one sense, the full migration of AI presents a challenge to the current job market.
The challenges of adopting AI and ML were categorized into four points. The first is maturity of the enterprise that mainly encompasses skill of the workforce. The second is the suspense and fear attached to AI migration due to the inadequate knowledge of its benefits. The third is the funding and the fourth is the vendor strategy.
