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:
- Create a wall of iPads, 4,005-miles long and 61-feet high
extending from Anchorage, Alaska to Miami, Florida.
- Build the Great iPad Wall of China—at twice the average
height of the original.
- Build a 20-foot high wall around South America.
- Cover 86 percent of Mexico City.
- 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."
"Disclaimer Note: "InformationWeek India and UBM India do not endorse, and have not verified the views and claims expressed in this vendor Press Release."