IDC: We face a looming crisis - we won't have anywhere to store hundreds of exabytes of data

Posted by Tom Foremski - March 6, 2007

As if we didn't have global warming and many other things to worry about...

IDC estimates that the world had 185 exabytes of storage available last year and will have 601 exabytes in 2010.

But the amount of stuff generated is expected to jump from 161 exabytes last year to 988 exabytes (closing in on 1 zettabyte) in 2010.

Source: Tech researchers calculate digital info

Interesting, IDC, the world renowned market research firm, is saying that we will generate nearly 1,000 exabytes of data by 2010 yet only have the capacity to store about 600 exabytes.

But how is it that we would be able to generate almost 1 zettabyte of data in the first place--without having a place to store it...?

Surely, if we can generate it, we are able to store it, because data comes to us from data storage systems...

Is IDC talking about data that we might like to store but we won't be able to store?

Then that figure is meaningless, because there is no end of data we might want to capture and store in the future. And there is no end of these type of useless market research forecasts, imho.

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