For a large enterprise to take costs out of enterprise storage, or to fuel new, power-hungry AI applications, or to rapidly recover from a cyberattack, it’s virtually a Robin Hood-like feat of taking from one source and giving to another. But is it possible to make this “take from one to give to another” approach a win-win scenario? With enterprise storage, the answer is a resounding YES.

By reducing the power that enterprise data infrastructure requires, CIOs can take power from enterprise storage and give it to the AI systems, or other applications, that desperately need it.

By consolidating storage to multi-petabyte scale, high-end enterprise storage, the CIO dramatically reduces the CAPEX and OPEX of their storage infrastructure and gives the budget to business-enhancing AI projects, and other new initiatives, that will transform the enterprise.

By implementing a cyber storage resilient, recovery-first strategy to address ransomware, malware, and other cyber threats, the CISO can take the leverage away from cyber criminals − cutting down the need to pay a “ransom” for data, like a master archer − and give the leverage back to the enterprise itself to protect its own “castle” of data infrastructure.

In these three cases, it’s a win-win for the enterprise customer because there are cost savings that help facilitate business growth; increased power efficiency that helps alleviate the burden to power generative AI data centers; and a resilient bounce back from a cyberattack that allows the business to continue uninterrupted and practically unaffected.

Reminiscent of the Robin Hood character from English folklore, this approach of working within the enterprise IT infrastructure to take from one and give to another is ripe for success in 2026 because of competing forces. Storage Costs vs. Infrastructure Investment. Power reduction vs. Power-hungry AI and traditional data centers. Cyberattacks vs. Cyber recovery. But the only way for you to hit your target is to be strategic about it.

Let’s take a closer look at these three areas – cyber, IT power usage, and CAPEX/OPEX – to help guide your decision-making for next steps. So much has changed that CIOs, CISOs, CTOs and CFOs should take a fresh look at enterprise storage in 2026.

In a similar spirit of Robin Hood who was quoted as saying, “A good deed is never lost,” let it be said in storage folklore (with a wink and a smile), “Good data is never lost – with cyber resilient storage that uses less power, while lowering CAPEX and OPEX.”

Heroics are required in IT, more broadly, and in storage administration, more specifically, just as much as in other areas of an organization. It’s time to take courage as a resilient leader and apply it to modernizing your enterprise storage infrastructure.

Cyber Storage Resilience as the Hero

In a PwC survey of executives at large enterprises in October 2025, only 6% of the executives surveyed think they are prepared for a cyberattack. Yet, when developing their comprehensive cybersecurity strategy, most CIOs, CIOs and CTOs leave out enterprise storage. Since 90% or more of your enterprise’s data sits in your enterprise storage infrastructure, wouldn’t you want to protect it as well as understand when it is being attacked?

You’re also going to logically want to recover rapidly from an attack. At the same time, you need to make sure that the data you’re recovering is a known good copy. What this means is that the data doesn’t have malware or ransomware embedded in it. But because malware, ransomware and other cyberattacks are done surreptitiously, you don’t always know whether there is malware or ransomware already on the storage.

Once you put the data in a fenced forensic environment and make sure that what you have is actually a known good copy. As a best practice, you should still have your application owners take a look at it to make sure that nothing has been damaged.

One good thing from a storage perspective that some companies make available, such as Infinidat, is making sure that you can interface between your SIEM and SOAR cybersecurity data center-wide applications and your storage infrastructure. If Microsoft Central or your Security Operations Center (SOC) detects an attack, you don’t want to wait. You want to start taking snapshots instantaneously – and you can do that if your storage is integrated with your SIEM, SOAR and SOC. That’s an automated process when you adopt Infinidat’s InfiniSafe ACP solution.

Infinidat is a leader in cyber resilient enterprise storage. Our award-winning InfiniSafe® software delivers a bevy of cyber storage resilience capabilities, including immutable snapshots, logical air-gapping, fenced forensic environment, and near-instantaneous recovery. We also innovated with our ground-breaking Automated Cyber Protection (ACP) and was one of the first storage solution providers to integrate Cyber Detection capabilities into a primary storage platform.

Power Efficiency as the Hero

Large enterprises have petabytes, tens of petabytes, or, even, hundreds of petabytes of storage, which consume incredible amounts of power and cooling. However, power shortages are sweeping the industry. It often has to do with how AI needs lots of power, and it absolutely does, but even traditional data centers are running out of power, too.

The rapid expansion of AI is causing an unprecedented, critical shortage of power for data centers. Enterprises are building AI data centers or refactoring existing data centers to handle AI. There is a rapid growth of data center construction. But the power shortage is not just for AI data centers; it’s traditional data centers as well.

Demand for electricity by data centers is projected to double or even triple by 2028, with some analysts predicting a 10-gigawatt (GW) to 19-GW capacity gap by 2028, as reported by the Financial Times.

At Infinidat, we have seen our customers save watts of power by consolidating storage. One of our Fortune 500 customers leveraged our Infinidat technology to consolidate 288 floor tiles down to 61 floor tiles, running all the same applications, workloads and use cases – dramatically reducing power consumption, while saving >$60M over a 3-year period. What they did with the extra power was reallocate it to other applications and workloads. This power efficiency ultimately optimizes your data center. It is certainly in your best interest to optimize power across your storage infrastructure stack.

Infinidat’s InfiniVerse® Dashboard includes power consumption reporting to assist customers with achieving their power efficiency goals. We capture historical Power Consumption (kW) of their Infinidat estate. Customers can determine their power usage and use this data for their own internal initiatives or SLAs.

Couple this with the fact that our InfiniBox G4 platform is between 2.8 to 6.9X more power efficient on a Watts/TBu basis than a certain incumbent storage vendor with a large installed base. The challenge of power is shifting the enterprise storage landscape.

CAPEX/OPEX Reduction as the Hero

Storage consolidation also contributes to reducing CAPEX and OPEX. Not only does it reduce power consumption, but storage consolidation also frees up rack space, cooling resources, and IT operational manpower. This is ideal when your budgets are flat or limited. Consolidation of storage systems puts you in a stronger position to reallocate strategically.

Global Fortune 1000 IT budgets are not going up, but CIOs, CISOs and other IT leaders are being asked to do more. This is where the “Robin Hood approach” with enterprise storage comes in handy. You want to work with an enterprise storage solution provider, like Infinidat, that specializes in storage consolidation and has done it for many high-end, large enterprises. More than 26% of the Fortune 50 are Infinidat customers.

Additionally, there is an IT skills gap. The average company has a major IT skills gap, with approximately 25% of open IT recs that cannot be filled. There’s no one to fill them. So, if you can go from 16 storage admins to four, you just freed up 12 IT professionals to get retrained to work on the new AI project, cyber project, or other areas of your IT infrastructure.

One of our Infinidat customers does over 30 petabytes of storage with only two storage admins across six data centers. This has freed up IT operational manpower to work on other projects that are critical to the success of the business.

It’s best to be proactive about it all, creating targeted paths to meet other IT needs of the enterprise.