Data Centre Magazine April 2021 | Page 91

TECHNOLOGY

18 zettabytes

Global Data Volume 2016 .

74 zettabytes

Global Data Volume 2021 .

79 zettabytes

Data produced by IoT devices in 2025 .

“ As data accumulates , there is a greater likelihood that additional services and applications will be attracted to this data ”

DAVE MCCRORY VP OF GROWTH , GLOBAL HEAD OF INSIGHTS AND ANALYTICS , DIGITAL REALTY
services and applications will be attracted to this data . This is the same effect gravity has on objects around a planet . As the mass or density increases , so does the strength of gravitational pull .”
More than a decade later , the digital economy is feeling that pull more than ever . With the advent of the internet of things ( IoT ), the way data moves in the digital age is changing radically . By 2025 , connected devices alone will generate an estimated 79 zettabytes of information . If

How much is 1 Zettabyte ?

• 1trn Gigabytes
• 40bn Blu Ray copies of Blade Runner : The FInal Cut
• The whole internet circa 2013
• 10.1mn years spent downloading
you take into consideration the fact that , in 2016 , the entire volume of all data on earth amounted to just 18 zettabytes - or about 720bn Blu Ray copies of Blade Runner : the Final Cut - it all starts to get a little mind boggling .
The source of this monumental growth in data creation is largely thanks to the IoT . In the pre-IoT era , the majority of data was created by people - think emails , social media posts , and high-resolution jpegs of Jeff Goldblum lying on that table in Jurassic Park . In an age where there were an estimated 11.7bn connected devices active in the world at the end of 2020 - a figure which is expected to almost triple in the next decade - people are no longer the ones making all the data .
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