Update 8/17/2010: We have published an updated infographic which corrects the math error in the iStack height and Terabyte equations. Please check it out and provide comments and feedback. We appreciate your interaction with the Wikibon community!
Information Explosion & Cloud Storage
What’s critical to realize is that 35% more digital information is created today than the capacity exists to store it; and this number will jump to over 60% over the next several years.
While it might seem the responsibility of the consumer, most of these gigabytes of data will pass through the servers, network, or routers of an enterprise at some point. When they do, the enterprise is responsible at that moment for managing that content, protecting user privacy, watching over account information, and protecting copyright.
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Learn More: The Digital Universe Decade – Are You Ready?
#1 by Roger Hart on August 2, 2010 - 10:58 am
“What’s critical to realize is that 35% more digital information is created today than the capacity exists to store it;”
I'm curious – how is this figure arrived at? Does the existence of “digital information” not require that this information be stored somewhere?
#2 by Michael Bisson on August 2, 2010 - 3:03 pm
Think your whole iStack maths has gone a bit wrong.
With 337.5 x 414 in a single layer of iPads, there would be 139,725 in a layer and 279,450 in an inch given their half inch thickness, not 3492.
75,000,000,000 iPads divided by the 279,450 per inch gives a height of approx 268,384 inches and with 63,360 inches in a mile this would make the stack under 4.24 mile high, far short of 339 miles!
#3 by Bryanthompson on August 2, 2010 - 7:31 pm
your math concerning the ipad size is definitely off. if they are laid flat, 1 petabyte would be roughly 32 inches or so, definitely smaller than an elephant.
#4 by Bhiggy3 on August 3, 2010 - 10:48 pm
Why, why why why WHY would you use the iPad as the standard for data storage? Is this an Ipad ad?
#5 by Michael Bisson on August 9, 2010 - 4:43 am
Best? Something that is blatantly misleading? Hopefully this will fall into the 35% of digital information created today that the capacity does not exist to store it.
And to echo Bhiggy3's comment – Why oh why the iPad? OK if iPads alone were used to store data it would cost a lot and take up a lot of space (Just not as much as you claim) Problem is no-one in their right mind would do this as there are much more cost and space effective options available. By 2020 when I expect the realities of content size will far out-shadow these estimates storage will also have moved on.
iPads are obviously of the now so this is something that people can relate to but when you F**K it up as badly as this you completely fail in what you have set out to do then you really have to question the reliability of any of it – especially as the graphic lists another wikibon article as a source.
#6 by Kim Bille on August 9, 2010 - 8:27 am
1.2 Zettabytes > 900 Exabytes, right?
So why is the iStack of the latter much larger than the former??
#7 by Jeff Stanger on August 11, 2010 - 2:42 pm
“Best” as sign-off, not as declaration about the post. Sorry, was confusing.
#8 by Michael on August 11, 2010 - 2:48 pm
Fair enough, sorry for getting confused. Really not irked by your comment but by the fact this is being ignored by Wikibon who show no desire to correct things, despite having emailed the author.
#9 by Wikibon on August 17, 2010 - 1:51 pm
We made corrections to this infographic, which can be found here: http://wikibon.org/blog/unstructured-data/ Thanks all for your comments and information, it is appreciated!