Digital info set to grow five times by 2012

Sujit John, TNN May 20, 2009, 01.23pm IST

ORLANDO: In this economic environment in which most things are going down, here's something that's still rising, digital information.

Very, very precisely, the world created 3,892,179,868,480,350,000,000 (or almost 4 sextillion) bits of new digital information in 2008. Considering that there are 8 bits per byte, that also translates to about 487 billion gigabytes, or the equivalent of more than 162 trillion digital photos or 4.8 quadrillion online bank transactions.

The figure comes from a study by research firm IDC, and presented here on Monday at EMC World, an annual gathering of the storage company's partners, customers, developers, and analysts that saw some 7,000 attendees this year.

According to the study, the amount of digital information created last year grew 73% over that in the previous year, and that was faster than even IDC's previous projection. Says John Gantz, chief research officer for IDC, "Contrary to popular belief, as the economy deteriorated in late 2008, the pace of digital information created and transmitted over the internet, phone networks and airwaves actually increased."

The study forecasts that the digital universe will double in size every 18 months. In 2012, five times as much digital information is expected to be created compared to that in 2008. Over the next four years, the number of information-generation technologies and interactions are expected to increase dramatically.

Mobile users are projected to grow three times and 600 million more people are expected to become internet users. Non-traditional IT devices such as wireless meters, automobile navigation systems, industrial machines, RFID readers and intelligent sensor controllers are projected to grow 3.6 times.

And interactions between people via email, messaging, social networks, etc, will grow 8 times, says the study. The increased access to broadband communications, electronic patient records, smart electric grids, smart buildings, etc, as also internet commerce are seen to be the other big growth drivers for digital information.

How to manage this with lower budgets

But all this growth is coming at a time when IT budgets are declining, creating a greater divide between the amount of information generated and the amount of IT resources purchased and deployed to manage it. Says Joe Tucci, CEO of EMC Corp, "Whether you are a student, senior executive, stay-at-home parent or surgeon, the growth of digital information collides with every-day business and every-day life. Those who use information growth to their advantage are seeking out new and creative ways to manage , secure and protect the rapidly growing volumes."

So, what are these creative ways?

At EMC World, several new technologies, especially related to virtualization and cloud computing, were put forward as options for companies to manage more with less. One of these, called EMC Atmos onLine, provides customers instant access to online storage resources, managed by third party providers, to reduce capital expenses and management overhead.

It combines the flexibility and cost efficiencies of on-demand storage (you pay for only what you use) while providing the controls that enterprises require, such as reliable service levels, information protection and secure access. In other words, you avoid the capital expenditure of adding to your own data centre and the high cost of managing data over a dedicated storage area network, and you also avoid the risks typically associated with online resources.

EMC also announced a capability that allows a customer to move data from internal virtualized data centres to external ones, depending on its requirements. This is particularly important since most customers are reluctant to move all their information into an external cloud.

EMC company VMware's latest launch vSphere was the other big technology in focus. It's a layer of software and tools in the data centre that helps to combine all the physical and virtual resources in the centre into one centrally managed pool of computing power. "It becomes a single giant computer," VMware CEO Paul Maritz said. It allows you to use every resource in the data centre to its maximum capacity, dramatically increasing the efficiency of the centre.

(This correspondent is in Orlando on the invitation of EMC)