World’s data more than doubling every two years, says study

EMC recently announced results of the EMC-sponsored IDC Digital Universe study, “Extracting Value from Chaos”—which found that the world’s information is more than doubling every two years—with a colossal 1.8 zettabytes to be created and replicated in 2011, which is growing faster than Moore's Law.

The study’s fifth anniversary, measuring and forecasting the amount of digital information created and copied annually—analyzing the implications for individuals, enterprises, and IT professionals—has huge economical, social and technology implications for big data and other opportunities.

In terms of sheer volume, 1.8 zettabytes of data which was created in the 2011 global Digital Universe, is equivalent to:

• Every person in India tweeting 3 tweets per minute for 6,883 years non-stop.
• 32 days of (1.8 zettabytes) data download by the entire population of India (1.21 billion appx.).
• Every person in the world having over 215 million high-resolution MRI scans per day.
• Over 200 billion HD movies (each 2 hours in length)—would take 1 person 47 million years to watch every movie 24x7.
• The amount of information needed to fill 57.5 billion 32GB Apple iPads.

With these many iPads, we could:

1. Create a wall of iPads, 4,005-miles long and 61-feet high extending from Anchorage, Alaska to Miami, Florida.
2. Build the Great iPad Wall of China—at twice the average height of the original.
3. Build a 20-foot high wall around South America.
4. Cover 86 percent of Mexico City.
5. Build a mountain 25-times higher than Mt. Fuji.

The forces behind this relentless growth are driven by technology and money. New “information taming” technologies are driving the cost of creating, capturing, managing and storing information down to one-sixth of what it was in 2005. Additionally, since 2005 annual enterprise investments in the Digital Universe—cloud, hardware, software, services, and staff to create, manage, store and generate revenue from the information—have increased 50 percent to USD 4 trillion.

Study Highlights:
Massive server, data management and file growth not keeping pace with staffing: IDC notes that the skills, experience, and resources to manage the deluge of data and resources simply aren’t keeping pace with all areas of growth. Over the next decade (by 2020), IT departments worldwide will experience:

• 50X the amount of information to be managed.
• 10X the number of servers (virtual and physical).
  
•  75X  the number of files or containers that encapsulate the information in the digital universe, which is growing even faster than the information itself as more and more embedded systems, such as sensors in clothing, in bridges, or medical devices.
  
• 1.5X the number of IT professionals available to manage it all.

Cloud computing cost and operational efficiency: While cloud computing accounts for less than 2 percent of IT spending today, IDC estimates that by 2015 nearly 20 percent of the information will be "touched" by cloud computing service providers — meaning that somewhere in a byte's journey from originator to disposal it will be stored or processed in a cloud. Perhaps as much as 10 percent will be maintained in a cloud.

The digital shadow has a mind of its own: The amount of information individuals create themselves—writing documents, taking pictures, downloading music, etc.—is far less than the amount of information being created about them in the digital universe.
The liability and responsibility is with enterprises: While 75 percent of the information in the digital universe is generated by individuals, enterprises have some liability for 80 percent of information in the digital universe at some point in its digital life.
“The chaotic volume of information that continues growing relentlessly presents an endless amount of opportunity—driving transformational societal, technological, scientific, and economic changes,” said Jeremy Burton, Chief Marketing Officer, EMC Corporation. “Big Data  is forcing change in the way businesses manage and extract value from their most important asset – information."

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