IDC: Data explosion goes into the Zettabytes

Data growth has continued to explode throughout 2009, with a new report claiming a worldwide rise of 62 per cent.

The Digital Universe study, conducted by IDC on behalf of EMC, claimed digital information reached 0.8 Zettabytes one Zettabyte equals a trillion gigabytes last year and predicted this number would grow 44 fold to 35 Zettabytes by 2020.

"As the old saying goes, you ain't seen nothing yet," claimed John Gantz, chief research officer and senior vice president at IDC, in a statement.

The speedy growth in data will mean the cost of managing each byte drops significantly, but the report also said this will encourage further escalation.

"Think of the digital universe as a perpetual tsunami," added Gantz. "As this universe grows by an order of magnitude, we will have to deal with information in new ways."

The security industry is set for a busy time as the report claimed there would greater need for this type of technology. It predicted by 2020 the amount of files needing higher levels of security would be 50 per cent of the total, up from an estimated 30 per cent this year.

However, those in the cloud computing business will be happy with the findings, as the study said the increasingly popular technology model will lead to more than a trillion dollars of revenue being generated between now and 2014 and that a third of all data will be residing in the cloud by 2020.