Samsung is preparing a new subscription service for entities needing large and fast data-storage solutions. The Korean brand will provide upgradable storage options without requiring a large deployment cost. Thankfully, this will not affect us mortals, as this service is targeting companies.
While SSD and DRAM forecasts suggest that price increases have stopped for now, the memory business remains nonetheless quite volatile. And since companies don’t like unexpected events when laying out future investments, they tend to prefer solutions that offer a steady stream of revenue. In this regard, Samsung is planning to launch a subscription service for ultra-high-capacity data storage.
Samsung is set to present its future plans alongside Nvidia during the GTC 2024 conference. Among these, there will be memory products targeting machine learning, such as the brand’s HBM3E 12-layer DRAM and petabyte (PB)-level SSD solution. That said, the most notable is a new subscription service for the U.S. market offering ultra-high storage capacity without requiring a full upfront cost from the customer.
The idea is to provide businesses with large SSD storage capacities for periodic payments instead of a single purchase. All while getting support from Samsung for management, security, and upgrades. This also allows the customer more flexibility when using SSD storage without needing to build separate infrastructures.
According to Samsung, the subscription service will help reduce initial investment and maintenance costs in storage infrastructures for customers. The brand is planning to demonstrate how this subscription service can simplify data management during GTC.
From the wording used by Samsung, this approach seems to be similar to what individual users receive from the likes of OneDrive and Dropbox, in the sense that you never own those storage devices even after paying the full value. On one hand, this means that the customer will need to continue paying indefinitely to keep data, but on the other, the capacity can climb gradually as needs grow, all without a massive upfront cost.