April 16, 2008
281 billion gigabytes of storage space needed by 2011
Digital content will grow ten-fold by 2011. But is there enough storage space to host them?
Just how much data has been produced ever since everything turned digital? By the end of 2007, the “digital universe” was at 281 exabytes (281 billion gigabytes) and was 10% bigger than was previously believed.
Thanks to the popularity of digital gadgets, as well as the applications that made content creation and sharing easy, digital content is predicted to grow ten-fold by 2011. To manage this data, it will require more than 20 quadrillion, or 20 million billion, of storage space. This poses “a tremendous management challenge for both businesses and consumers” according to the IDC report, as only half of the entire digital content could be stored permanently. Aside from rich media content, cloud computing and social networking data contributed to the ballooning of the digital universe.
Ironically, while about 70% of the total amount of digital content were created by individuals, enterprises are responsible for the management of “security, privacy, reliability and compliance” of as much as 85% of all data. IDC’s report suggests that enterprises—especially those that are in the business of data management—should already look into the human factor of working with digital information in order to face the challenges of creating, storing, securing, retaining and disposing of content. This means that compliance measures and policies must be spearheaded at all levels of the enterprise.
On the technical side of managing information, new equipment and practices related to optimization, analysis, access, and security should be put in place. Information lifecycle management processes also form the core of the issue.
The challenge is made more complicated by the growing popularity of mobile tools that enable users to create, store, and access data. Laptops, cell phones, and PDAs among others make data access management and security more important in the hyper-networked age. Enterprises should start laying down the strategies for securing the digital information about their businesses, as well as for protecting the related “digital shadow” of their employees.
According to the IDC report, digital shadow refers to the information generated about the average person on a daily basis. As people share more information about themselves on Intranets and the Web, their digital shadows surpass the digital information that they have created themselves. This means businesses must ensure the privacy and protection of their employees against those who would exploit people’s digital histories. Web 2.0 technologies and digital gadgets form the perfect marriage for digital content distribution. Unfortunately, these same technologies make it a lot easier for workers to—knowingly or by accident—leak content to the wilder web.
When everything from business strategies, to user data, to financial transactions, and lately, to marital disputes broadcast on Youtube is fed to the online public, the room for error is a lot smaller than enterprises would be comfortable with.
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