One of these days I was making a research of many information is available worldwide. It has come to my attention that according to studies of IDC and EMC have found that all the digital information stored up to 2007 was around 281,000 million gigabytes, this means that the digital information stored grows around a 60% per year, it is hoped that for 2011 this number will grow to 1,800 exabytes… that’s a lot!
Just to make an analogy: The number of bits stored today is bigger than the number of stars found on the physical universe.
Most of the digital information available that it is generated from one person is bigger than the information created by that same person. This is something in which digital cameras, surveillance cameras, digital TV and of course social networks available on the Internet contribute in a big measure. This is an equivalent of 45 gigabytes of digital information for each habitant of the planet of 2007.
Some of the main factors that have contributed to fast growing of information in the digital universe are the big amount of digital cameras, digital TVs, surveillance cameras, Internet access, applications with sensors, and social networks that compress the digital data created by millions of online users.
Some statistics are:
- On year 2007 more than 1,000 million of digital cameras and cell phones with cameras where registered, making this that less of the 10% of images captured were on a traditional picture films.
- Everyday more users have access to the Internet. In 5 years there will be more than 2,000 million of users.
- Everyday more people sends text messages using their cell phones. It is estimated that in 5 years there are going to be around of 3,000 million users of mobile phones.
- Everyday more people is converting photographic films to digital photos, and analogical video and voice recordings are converted to digital.
- The number of digital TVs was duplicated on 2007 and it is expected that it will overpass the 500 million for year 2011.
- Video surveillance cameras and images captured by them feed a in big way the growth of the digital universe.
It is considered that for year 2011 individual will create 70% of the digital data available worldwide.
In the measure that digital data grows it is needed more capacity and storage devices. And it is not only to store the data, data needs to be managed to make sure that is going to be always available.
The corporate and governmental environments generate on the 30% of the digital information worldwide, and they are responsible of the security of 85% of the information that should be protected by confidentiality and regulations.
