 |
Asia-Pac creates historical data: IDC
Study predicts a six-fold digital information growth to 988 exabytes by 2010, writes AMIT ROY CHOUDHURY.
By: Amit Roy Choudhury
THE Asia Pacific region (APJ), including Japan, generated 670,000 times more digital information last year than that found in all books written by humans throughout history, according to a first-ever quantitative study done on the digital universe by IT research house, IDC.
That is equivalent to 36 exabytes. A byte is the basic unit of measurement of digital information - and one exabyte is equivalent to one billion gigabytes (GB). One GB itself is equivalent to one billion bytes.
Most home computers have storage space that ranges from 80GB to 320GB.
But impressive as the APJ number is, it is just 22 per cent of the 161 exabytes of information created globally in 2006, which is 3 million times the information in all books ever written by humans.
This is the equivalent of 12 stacks of books, each extending more than 93 million miles (149.7 million kilometres) from the earth to the sun - equivalent to a stack of books 986 feet (300.5 metres) high, weighing six tonnes for every person on earth.
About one quarter of the digital universe is original (that is pictures recorded, keystrokes in an e-mail, phone calls), while three quarters is replicated (e-mails forwarded, backed up transaction records, Hollywood movies on DVD).
The IDC report was sponsored by storage company EMC Corporation. It measures and forecasts the amounts and types of digital information created and copied in the world - and whether it is generated from individuals or businesses.
Speaking to BizIT, Steve Leonard, EMC's Asia Pacific and Japan president, said the IDC study is the first to give an estimate of the amount of information, including copies, that is created in the world in a given year.
IDC estimates that by 2010, there will be a six-fold annual information growth to 988 exabytes, which translates to a compound annual growth rate of 57 per cent. By 2010, APJ will contribute 216 exabytes of digital data. This year, APJ is expected to produce 55 exabytes of data.
An interesting point to note is that the distribution of the expanding digital universe by geographic region more or less resembles IT spending by region. All regions are growing, although the emerging economies across the world, in particular in the Asia Pacific region, are growing faster than the worldwide average, the report says.
According to Mr Leonard, in the mature economies of North America, Japan and Western Europe, digital information growth is driven as much by increased device usage and resolution (for digital cameras) as by device penetration of the population as a whole.
In emerging economies, however, this dynamic is reversed. The growth of the digital universe is driven more by penetration of the devices into the population than by an increase in device capacities or resolutions.
The study estimates that the share of the digital universe attributable to emerging economies, including India, China, Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa is around 10 per cent.
Mr Leonard said that the proportionate share of the emerging economies will grow 30-40 per cent faster than the share of mature economies.
Some of the factors that will determine the growth in these emerging economies will be how fast they convert their TV infrastructure to digital transmission, how many consumers can afford high-end electronics, the rollout of sophisticated data-rich organisational applications, the automation of small businesses, and the deployment of surveillance cameras, he added.
While individuals will generate nearly 70 per cent of the digital universe by 2010, most of this content will be touched by an organisation along the way - on a network, in a data centre, at a hosting site, at a telephone or Internet switch, or in a back-up system.
Organisations - including businesses of all sizes, agencies, governments and associations - will be responsible for the security, privacy, reliability and compliance of at least 85 per cent of the information, the EMC official noted.
The EMC official said there are a number of trends at work to create a rapid expansion of the digital universe. 'These range from the growth of the Internet and broadband availability, to the conversion of formerly analog information - film, voice calls, TV signals - to digital format,' he noted. Giving an example, he pointed out that the electronic 'paperwork' behind the average insurance claim may now include several megabytes of digital pictures.
IDC research last year shows that almost one-fifth of organisations expect their data warehouses to double in size this year.
He added that falling prices and increased performance for digital devices, from phones and cameras to RFID (radio frequency identification) tags and computers, also help to drive up usage.
Mr Leonard, however, said that the prime mover in the increase in digital information is the Internet. 'In 1996 there were only 48 million people routinely using the Internet. The World Wide Web was just four years old. By 2006, there were 1.1 billion users on the Internet. By 2010, we expect another 500 million users to come online.'
  |
 |
