[Air-l] 988 exabytes of info created in 2010

Tue Mar 6 12:09:10 PST 2007

IDC research huh?  Does that qualify as an 'A Journal'? ;)

The results of commercial research firms are always so nicely  
packaged and illustrated---and maybe that's one of the reasons that  
actual real world decisions are based on them.  (50 Rhode Islands?   
That sounds like a lot, I'd better buy more ;)

Which, of course, makes them 'important' but for reasons other than  
their 'truth'.  Their importance seems self-reinforcing: people  
listen to these groups because they know that their peers and  
customers use them to make decisions, and the more they are used the  
more likely others will use them.  Sort of the 'no one ever got fired  
for believing IDC/Gartner etc' effect.

I have students quoting such 'studies' all the time and I find them  
completely unable to discuss the extent to which they believe the  
studies and why (at worst the question appears nonsensical to them).   
This is perhaps because many of the statistics are pulled from (free)  
press releases, like the below, rather than the full (expensive)  
reports, but also because the standards of review are completely  
opaque, even once the full reports are pulled.

Is anyone aware of research that asks the question, 'how reliable are  
the predictions of commercial research firms?'.  (Although this study  
being sponsored by the 'we sell storage' firm, EMC, so maybe it ought  
to be categorized as 'vendor research'!).

Now that would be an interesting article.  Perhaps IDC would even  
sponsor it :)

--J

On Mar 6, 2007, at 2:35 PM, Janna Anderson wrote:

> http://www.internetnews.com/stats/article.php/3663641
>
> March 6, 2007
> Billions and Billions of Gigabytes Served
> By Clint Boulton
> Internetnews.com
>
> Several reports talk about how the explosion of digital information is
> creating new challenges for companies trying to rein in IT costs.  
> Others
> tell us how to cope with these challenges. But none tells us just  
> how big
> the information glut will be in the next few years. Until now.
>
> Researcher IDC today released a report, sponsored by information  
> management
> vendor EMC, forecasting that as much as 988 billion gigabytes of  
> digital
> information will be created in 2010, a six-fold increase from 2006.
>
> Last year, 161 exabytes (exabyte is a billion gigabytes) of digital
> information were created, representing roughly 3 million times the
> information in all the books ever written. Or, if you prefer, the  
> equivalent
> of 12 stacks of books, each extending more than 92 million miles  
> from the
> earth to the sun.
>
> Whoa.
>
>> From now until 2010, IDC said it expects information will sport a  
>> compound
> annual growth rate of 57 percent to hit the 988 exabyte mark.
>
> While IDC isn't pushing any panic buttons yet, Chief Research  
> Officer John
> Gantz said all companies, from Wal-Mart to AT&T to the bicycle shop  
> down the
> street, will eventually need to employ more sophisticated  
> techniques to
> transport, store, secure and replicate the information.
>
> "The diversity of information, from very small packets of info from  
> RFID to
> very large video surveillance files, is different among different
> constituencies in an organization," Gantz told internetnews.com.
>
> "You can't treat all data, all packets, and all bytes the same.  
> That's where
> you get into interesting situations of classifying data and  
> determining what
> you save and what you don't.
>
> Whether it's putting more bytes per platter or moving direct-attached
> storage to storage area networks, Gantz said vendors have to keep  
> advancing
> information management technology because the "digital universe" is  
> not
> going to stop growing.
>
> Thanks to the Internet, that digital universe is thriving.
>
> Only 48 million people routinely logged onto the Internet in 1996.  
> Last
> year, there were 1.1 billion users on the Internet. IDC expects  
> another 500
> million users to come online by 2010.
>
> Those users aren't just surfing Web sites to find out whether the  
> Yankees or
> Red Sox won. They're creating scores of unstructured data,  
> including images
> and e-mails, and exchanging them.
>
> Pictures are the leading usurpers of gigabytes. People love taking and
> sending them. IDC said images taken from digital cameras, camera  
> phones,
> medical scanners and security cameras will absorb the largest  
> number of
> bytes, topping 500 billion by 2010.
>
> No surprise when you consider images captured on consumer digital  
> cameras in
> 2006 exceeded 150 billion worldwide, while the number of images  
> captured on
> cell phones hit almost 100 billion.
>
> And there have been, and will continue to be, a lot of e-mail.
>
>> From 1998 to 2006, the number of e-mail mailboxes grew from 253  
>> million to
> nearly 1.6 billion. During the same period, the number of e-mails  
> sent grew
> three times faster than the number of people e-mailing.
>
> Instant messaging? IDC predicts 250 million IM accounts by 2010.
>
> What are we to make of this digital information bounty? You can say  
> people
> are hungry for information, that they are gluttonous consumers for
> knowledge, be it trivial or profound.
>
> But these consumers are actually also information creators, and  
> that will
> only snowball with the current explosion in wikis and blogs, which  
> provide
> avenues on which information travel.
>
> IDC said that while nearly 70 percent of the digital universe will be
> generated by individuals by 2010, most of this content will be  
> touched by a
> business.
>
> Information will traverse telephones, Internet switches, hosting  
> sites,
> storage sites, networks or datacenters, and enterprises will be  
> responsible
> for the security, privacy, reliability and compliance of 85 percent  
> of the
> information.
>
>
>> _______________________________________________
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>
> -- 
> Janna Quitney Anderson
> Assistant Professor of Communications
> Director of Internet Projects
> School of Communications
> Elon University
> andersj at elon.edu
> (336) 278-5733 (o)
> (336) 446-0486 (h)
>
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