Inside the Numbers Behind Data Growth

We hear a lot about how data volumes are rapidly growing in corporate, governmental, and consumer realms. It's interesting to take a look inside the numbers of this phenomenon because they reveal some fascinating trends and intriguing opportunities. Did you know:

• It's estimated that by 2010, about 70 percent of the world's digital data will be created by individuals. For corporations, information is growing from such disparate causes as surveillance cameras and data-retention regulations.
   
• IDC estimates the world generated 161 billion GB — 161 exabytes — of digital information in 2007. That's like 12 stacks of books that each reach from the Earth to the sun. Or, as IDC points out, you might think of it as three million times the information in all the books ever written.
   
• Consumers bought 739.7 million GB of hard-drive storage space last year — 11 times more than what they bought in 2003.
   
• In the U.S. alone, $600 million worth of external hard drives were sold in 2006, up 53 percent from 2005, according to market research firm The NPD Group.
   
• 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.
   
• From 1998 to 2006, the number of email mailboxes grew from 253 million to nearly 1.6 billion. During the same period, the number of emails sent grew three times faster than the number of people emailing.
   
• About a quarter of the digital universe is original (pictures recorded, keystrokes in an email, phone calls), while three quarters is replicated (emails forwarded, backed-up transaction records, Hollywood movies on DVD).
   
• By 2010, nearly 70 percent of the digital universe will be created by individuals. Meanwhile, organizations (businesses, agencies, governments, associations, etc.) will be responsible for the security, privacy, reliability, and compliance of at least 85 percent of that same digital universe, IDC says.
   
• This growth of the digital universe is uneven. "Emerging economies" — Asia Pacific without Japan and the rest of the world outside North America and Western Europe — now account for 10 percent of the digital universe, but will grow 30 to 40 percent faster than mature economies.