Data explosion ahead!

New research undertaken by IDC and EMC has shown that the data explosion that Information Managers have been talking about for years is alive and well.

In an interesting study, The expanding digital universe, the researchers found that the information stored on disk arrays has grown at a compound annual growth rate of 60 per cent over the last decade - and that the growth rate is predicted to be maintained through to 2010. As a result of which the global data storage requirements will increase from 161 billion gigabytes in 2006 to 988 billion gigabytes in 2010. These are of course amazingly huge numbers and seem to be an order of magnitude higher than any predictions I have read elsewhere.

Digital images are the main reason for the massive growth, and IDC predicts that individuals will create nearly 70% of all the content. The report comments

"This incredible growth of the digital universe means more than simply the fact that as individuals we will be facing information explosion on an unprecedented scale. It has implications for organizations concerning privacy, security, intellectual property protection, content management, technology adoption, information management, and data center architecture"

Organisational data while only 30% of the whole will also grow, driven by factors such as increased use of computers in small business, compliance requirements, security imaging and new technology such an increasing use of RFID and sensor networks.

Read the full report