Resource Library
Singapore's Digital Information Growing Faster than Global Average
Expected To Exceed Total Available Storage By 2008
Singapore - Thursday, April 26, 2007
The Expanding Digital Universe: A Forecast of Worldwide Information Growth Through 2010, a White Paper created by IDC, reveals the amount of information the world is creating and copying in a given year. It forecasts this entire "digital universe" through the year 2010, and it identifies the specific information types and geographies contributing to its growth. The White Paper's findings have sweeping implications for individuals, businesses and society. The complete study can be found at: www.emc.com/about/destination/digital_universe.
According to the study, in 2006, 161 exabytes of digital information was created and copied globally, continuing an unprecedented period of information growth. This means that the digital universe equals approximately three million times the information in all the books ever written - or the equivalent of 12 stacks of books, each extending more than 93 million miles from the earth to the sun. According to IDC, the amount of information created and copied in 2010 will surge more than six fold to 988 exabytes*, a compound annual growth rate of 57%. Key findings of the White Paper include:
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The 2006 digital universe was 161 billion gigabytes (161 exabytes) in size.
IDC projects a six fold annual information growth from 2006 to 2010.
While nearly 70% of the digital universe will be generated by individuals
by 2010, organizations will be responsible for the security, privacy, reliability
and compliance of at least 85% of the information.
Today, if all that information was printed out, the stack of paper would
reach 200 feet high, overtaking the height of Singapore's OUB Tower
in five year's time.
While nearly 70% of the digital universe will be generated by individuals by 2010, most of this content will be touched by an organization along the way — on a network, in a data center, at a hosting site, at a telephone or Internet switch, or in a backup system. Organizations — including businesses of all sizes, agencies, governments and associations — will be responsible for the security, privacy, reliability and compliance of at least 85% of the information.
Commenting on the findings, Richard Price, Country Manager, EMC Singapore, said, "Asia's digital information explosion is largely driven by its high usage rate of rich media, user-generated content and internet users, especially in countries such as Singapore, Japan and Korea. This ever-growing mass of information is putting a considerable strain on the IT infrastructures we have in place today, and will change the way organizations and IT professionals do their jobs, and the way we consumers use information."
Given that 85% of the information created and copied will be the responsibility of organizations and businesses; we must take steps as an industry to ensure we develop flexible, reliable and secure information infrastructures to handle the deluge." he added.
Other key findings:
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Images - Images, captured by more than 1 billion devices
in the world, from digital cameras and camera phones to medical scanners and
security cameras, comprise the largest component of the digital universe.
Digital Cameras - The number of images captured on consumer
digital still cameras in 2006 exceeded 150 billion worldwide, while the number
of images captured on cell phones hit almost 100 billion. IDC is forecasting
the capture of more than 500 billion images by 2010.
Camcorders - Camcorder usage should double in total minutes
of use between now and 2010.
E-mail - The number of e-mail mailboxes has grown from
253 million in 1998 to nearly 1.6 billion in 2006. During the same period,
the number of e-mails sent grew three times faster than the number of people
e-mailing; in 2006 just the e-mail traffic from one person to another - i.e.,
excluding spam - accounted for 6 exabytes.
Instant Messaging - There will be 250 million IM accounts
by 2010, including consumer accounts from which business IMs are sent.
Broadband - Today over 60% of Internet users have access
to broadband circuits, either at home, at work or at school.
Internet - In 1996 there were only 48 million people routinely
using the Internet. The Worldwide Web was just two years old. By 2006, there
were 1.1 billion users on the Internet. By 2010, IDC expects another 500 million
users to come online.
Unstructured Data - Over 95% of the digital universe is
unstructured data. In organizations, unstructured data accounts for more than
80% of all information.
Compliance and Security - Today, 20% of the digital universe
is subject to compliance rules and standards and about 30% is potentially
subject to security applications.
Classification - IDC estimates that today less than 10%
of organizational information is "classified," or ranked according
to value. IDC expects the amount of classified data to grow better than 50%
a year.
Emerging Economies - These now account for 10% of the
digital universe but will grow 30-40% faster than mature economies.
* An exabyte is a unit of information or computer storage equal to one quintillion bytes or 1 thousand petabytes or 1 million terabytes. About EMC EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is the world leader in products, services and solutions for information management and storage that help organizations extract the maximum value from their information, at the lowest total cost, across every point in the information lifecycle. Information about EMC's products and services can be found at http://singapore.emc.com.
