The Digital Big Bang: 988 Billion Gigabytes by 2010
The Digital Big Bang: 988 Billion Gigabytes by 2010
March 7, 2007: An EMC sponsored IDC study forecasts the amount of digital information created in 2010 to hit a staggering 988 billion gigabytes. A result that will see digital information turn more than six times over the 161 billion created in 2006.
The research from IDC marks a first in measuring and forecasting the amounts and types of digital information not only created, but also copied, anywhere in the world. They’re calling it the ‘Expanding Digital Universe,’ as it’s a study that reveals that reveals we’re in for a digital bing bang, with information levels exploding to previously inconceivable magnitudes.
IDC puts the 161 billion gigabytes created in 2006 in perspective by making that figure comparable to three times the information given in all books ever written. There will have to be a lot of authors writing a lot of books very quickly before that comparison can come anywhere close to what will be experienced by 2010.
According to John Gantz, chief research officer and senior vice president at IDC, the escalation in digital content represents more than just a global explosion in information. “It represents an entire shift in how information is moved from analogue form, where it was finite, to digital form, where it’s infinite,” he says.
But IDC’s research claims that it’s not the organisations leading the charge on digital information growth, it will be individuals chewing up at least 70 percent of it. When it comes to the information’s security, privacy, reliability and compliance however, organisations will be responsible for at least 85 percent of it. Most of the information created by individuals will be touched by organisations a long the way, whether that be via a data centre, on a network or in a backup system.
Such a growth in information is obviously going to put a lot of undue pressure on established IT infrastructures, something EMC is quick to point out. “This explosive growth will change the way organisations and IT professionals do their jobs, and the way we consumers use information,” says Mark Lewis, EMC executive vice president and chief development officer.
Email could well be the tipping point as we head towards the digital big bang. IDC says email mailboxes have grown from 253 million in 1998 to nearly 1.6 billion in 2006. The number of emails sent, grew three times faster than the number of people emailing. In 2006, with spam taken out of the equation, email traffic still accounted for 6 exabytes. By 2010, we can expect to see 250 million instant messaging accounts.
Of course digital images will also play their role in the digital explosion. IDC projects that images will be captured by more than one billion devices by 2010, with digital cameras, phones, medical scanners and security cameras primarily leading the charge. Over 150 billion images were captured on consumer digital cameras in 2006, that figure looks set to blow out to 100 billion by 2010.
But with all this explosion in digital content, and with 1.1 billion users on the internet in 2006, IDC expects only another 500 million to come online by 2010. It’s a big figure, yet disproportionate when compared to not just the digital growth explosion, but also the higher contribution to digital content creation from emerging economies. In 2006, emerging economies accounted for 10 percent of the digital universe, that figure is projected to grow 30-40 percent faster than mature economies.