The volume of data in the big data age is simply mind-boggling. According to IBM, by 2020, the total amount of data on the planet will have ballooned to 40 zettabytes. You heard that right! 40 zettabytes is 43 trillion gigabytes. For more information on this, refer to the Wikipedia page on the zettabyte: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettabyte.
To get a handle on how much data this is, let me refer to an EMC press release published in 2010, which stated what 1 zettabyte was approximately equal to:
EMC study projects 45× data growth by 2020
The growth rate of data has been fuelled largely by a few factors, such as the following:
- The rapid growth of the internet.
- The conversion from analog to digital media, coupled with an increased ability to capture and store data, which in turn has been made possible with cheaper and better storage technology. There has been a proliferation of digital data input devices, such as cameras and wearables, and the cost of huge data storage has fallen rapidly. Amazon Web Services is a prime example of the trend toward much cheaper storage.
The internetification of devices, or rather the Internet of Things, is the phenomenon wherein common household devices, such as our refrigerators and cars, will be connected to the internet. This phenomenon will only accelerate the above trend.