John F. Gantz, Project Director
David Reinsel
Christopher Chute
Wolfgang Schlichting
John McArthur
Stephen Minton
Irida Xheneti
Anna Toncheva
Alex Manfrediz
An IDC White Paper - sponsored by EMC
A Forecast of Worldwide
Information Growth Through 2010
March 2007
The Expanding
Digital Universe
1
• In 2006, the amount of digital information created,
captured, and replicated was 1,288 x 1018 bits. In computer
parlance, that's 161 exabytes or 161 billion gigabytes (see
sidebar). This is about 3 million times the information in all
the books ever written.
• Between 2006 and 2010, the information added annually to
the digital universe will increase more than six fold from 161
exabytes to 988 exabytes.
• Three major analog to digital conversions are powering this
growth – film to digital image capture, analog to digital
voice, and analog to digital TV.
• Images, captured by more than 1 billion devices in the world,
from digital cameras and camera phones to medical scanners
and security cameras, comprise the largest component of the
digital universe. They are replicated over the Internet, on
private organizational networks, by PCs and servers, in data
centers, in digital TV broadcasts, and on digital projection
movie screens.
• IDC predicts that by 2010, while nearly 70% of the digital
universe will be created by individuals, organizations
(businesses of all sizes, agencies, governments, associations,
etc.) will be responsible for the security, privacy, reliability,
and compliance of at least 85% of that same digital universe.
• This rapidly expanding responsibility will put pressure on
existing computing operations and drive organizations to
develop more information-centric computing architectures.
• IT managers will see the span of their domains considerably
enlarged – as VoIP phones come onto corporate networks,
building automation and security migrates to IP networks,
surveillance goes digital, and RFID and sensor networks
proliferate.
• Information security and privacy protection will become a
boardroom concern