Twice as much data will be created in this five-year period than in the entire period since the advent of digital storage

Analyst firm IDC recently prepared annual forecasts for DataSphere and StorageSphere, the data that is created, consumed and stored in the world.

According to IDC experts, the amount of created and replicated data in 2020 increased unusually quickly due to a sharp increase in the number of people working, studying and playing at home. However, less than 2% of this new data was retained and survived until 2021. The rest were either “ephemeral” (created or replicated primarily for consumption purposes), or temporarily cached and subsequently overwritten with newer data.

Analysts are confident that data generation will grow faster than storage capacity. More than twice as much data is expected to be generated in the current five-year period than in the entire period since the advent of digital repositories. Average annual growth from 2020 to 2025 will be 23%.

The fastest growing segment of data is the Internet of Things (excluding CCTV cameras). In second place are social networks. Notably, data creation at the edge of the WAN is growing almost as fast as it is in the cloud, but the corporate datasphere is growing twice as fast as consumer data due to the growing role of the cloud for storage and consumption.

For StorageSphere, the 5-year CAGR for installed storage capacity worldwide is projected at 19.2%. Although not all created or replicated data is preserved (and not all must be preserved), the growth in data volume ultimately leads to the growth of StorageSphere. StorageSphere reached 6.7 ZB (1,021 bytes) in 2020.