Everyone who works in IT knows the volume of data being churned out by users never fails to increase. And as more devices connect to the Internet — IDC estimates there are 14 billion already — it’s only accelerated.
So it’s no surprise that the latest report from EMC — done in partnership with IDC — that tries to quantify what’s going on has some out of this world numbers:
–what the company calls the ‘digital universe’ now contains 4.4 trillion gigabytes and it’s doubling every two years. That means by 2020 it will hit 44 trillion gigabytes;
–The sheer volume of the world’s digital data would fill a stack of iPad Air tablets extending twp-thirds the distance to the moon. By 2020, this stack would extend from the earth to the moon 6.6 times due to the rate of data growth.
–currently, 60 per cent of data in the digital universe is attributed to mature markets such as Germany, Japan, and the United States, but by 2020, the percentage will flip, and emerging markets including Brazil, China, India, Mexico and Russia will account for the majority of data;
–this year less than 20 per cent of the data was “touched” by the cloud. By 2020, that percentage will double to 40 per cent;
–this year 18 per cent of data will be generated by mobile devices (include RFID tags, GPS devices, smart cards, cars, toys and dog collars). By 2020 that will be 27 per cent;
–two-thirds of the digital universe bits are created or captured by consumers and workers, yet enterprises have liability or responsibility for 85 per cent of the digital universe.