Are You Prepared for the Exploding 'Digital
Universe'? used with permission from Symantec "A perpetual tsunami." That€s how IDC describes the current growth of digital information throughout the world.€ It may be an understatement. IDC estimates that last year, despite the global recession, the so-called €Digital Universe€ grew by 62% to nearly 800,000 petabytes. (A petabyte is a million gigabytes.) This year, the Digital Universe is expected to reach 1.2 million petabytes. Putting this explosive growth in context, IDC expects that by 2020, the amount of digital information will be 44 times as big as it was in 2009. And here€s another statistic to keep in mind: While the amount of information in the Digital Universe will grow by a factor of 44 by 2020, IDC estimates the number of IT professionals in the world will grow by a factor of just 1.4. Clearly, big changes are
coming. This Tech Brief looks at some of the biggest ones for
IT. Expect our understanding of the degree of security required in the Digital Universe to profoundly change, IDC says. €A YouTube video of a cat doing tricks would seem to need less protection against hacking or corruption than a home-banking customer€s account balances. But each YouTube video is associated with an IP address and end-user profile, and of course, that video might not be of a cat but of something not fit for public viewing. Even worse, that seemingly innocuous cat video may actually be an effective delivery mechanism for the new variants of malware being created by the criminal underground.€ Then there€s the issue that what a consumer or company wants protected may change from day to day as circumstances change. (IDC notes that Sara Palin€s email account became a lot more interesting to hackers the day she was named a Vice Presidential candidate.) The issues for IT professionals
are clear. They€ll need access to tools and expertise to protect all that
data as never before. Getting the full attention of management will be
vital as well. According to IDC, nearly 75% of our digital information today is a copy € that is, only 25% is unique. That€s why data de-duplication technology will be key going forward. IDC expects de-duplication will soon take place on first-tier storage, which will significantly reduce post-process de-duplication. The €cloud€ (as in cloud computing) in particular will be an attractive place to reduce redundancy, given its one-to-many model. Despite the overwhelming growth
of digital information, IDC expects companies will continue to create,
copy, and store information mostly on traditional storage technologies
such as hard disk drives. IDC expects that as the cost per byte drops, so too does the investment in IT staff per byte. That means the tools for managing it all will have to change. IDC expects the increased complexity of managing digital information will be an incentive to migrate to cloud services. In addition, there will be
continued pressure inside data centers for automation, consolidation, and
virtualization. Expect this do-more-with-less situation to put
ever-increasing stress on IT organizations.
Preparing your data for storage in the future will be an ongoing process of de-duplication. If you need assistance with this process, please call Databranch to speak with an Account Manager. € €A Digital Universe Decade € Are You Ready?€ IDC, 4/26/2010
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