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SINGAPORE : From emails and documents; to body scans, dental records and music downloads, Asian online communities last year created more digital information than all the books ever written throughout history.
According to a study conducted by IDC, 161 exabytes (1 exabyte = 1 million terabytes and 1 terabyte= 1000 gigabytes) of digital information was created and copied globally in 2006, continuing the unprecedented period of information growth.
This means that the digital universe equals approximately three million times the information contained in all the books ever written - or the equivalent of 12 stacks of books, each extending more than 93 million miles from the earth to the sun.
The study also showed the amount of information created and copied in 2010 will surge more than six fold to 988 exabytes, with a compound annual growth rate of 57 percent.
In Singapore, the forecast is that digital information created and copied will surge from approximately 574 Petabytes in 2006 to 2,623 Petabytes in 2010.
While nearly 70 percent of the digital universe will be generated by individuals by 2010, most of this content will be touched by an organisation along the way - housed on a network, in a data center, at a hosting site, at a telephone or Internet switch, or in a backup system.
Organisations - including businesses of all sizes, agencies, governments and associations - will be responsible for the security, privacy, reliability and compliance of at least 85 percent of the information.
The total amount of information created when added to the total amount of information copied, across the three areas of imaging, data and voice, is expected to grow to 1,258 TB in 2008, compared to the 1,203 TB available for storage in 2008.
Commenting on the findings, Richard Price, Country Manager, EMC Singapore, said, "Asia's digital information explosion is largely driven by its high usage rate of rich media, user-generated content and internet users, especially in countries such as Singapore, Japan and Korea. This ever-growing mass of information is putting a considerable strain on the IT infrastructures we have in place today, and will change the way organisations and IT professionals do their jobs, and the way we consumers use information."
"Given that 85 percent of the information created and copied will be the responsibility of organisations and businesses; we must take steps as an industry to ensure we develop flexible, reliable and secure information infrastructures to handle the deluge," he added. - CNA /dt
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