Cloud computing to increase annual data growth 24-fold by 2020: study

The next 10 years will result in huge growth in the IT sector, with cloud computing stimulating more than $US1 trillion in incremental business revenue by 2014, according to a new study.

The EMC-sponsored study, which has just released its fourth update, was commissioned by market intelligence company IDC. The findings, which are based on IDC’s outlook of the market, estimated the amount of information created online in a year And the number of times it was shared, stored or uploaded.

The research found that the amount of digital information has increased 62 per cent since 2008 to 0.8 zettabytes (800 billion gigabytes). Despite last year’s financial crisis, the trend has continued; about 1.2 zettabytes of digital information is expected to be created in 2010.

The study compares the volume as being equivalent to every single man, woman and child on Earth ‘tweeting’ continually for 100 years, or using the same amount of data as 75 billion fully-loaded 16GB Apple iPads.

Despite the data growth and increase in business revenues, the report predicts that the number of IT professionals worldwide will only swell by a factor of 1.4 over the next four years.

EMC chairman and chief executive officer, Joe Tucci, said the study exposes many of the most pressing short-and longer-term strategic issues CIOs grapple with as they map out their IT strategies and investments

"Private cloud computing, the next major wave of IT, takes them there, promising new and increasingly automated ways for enterprises and consumers to manage and secure this unyielding onslaught of information”, he said.

IDC estimates that the increase in IT dollars spent on innovation means that $US1 trillion in increased business revenue could be generated between now and the end of 2014. The study also estimates that by 2020, more than one third of all digital information will either live or pass through the cloud.