Indian digital data stack as high as Everest
February 20, 2013, 11:21 am

Digital data generated by India last year as tall as Mount Everest, says study [Getty Images]

Digital data generated by India last year if stored in Apple’s iPhone 5 with 32 GB space, will equal over 5,100 stacks of the device, as tall as Mount Everest, says the study.

“India’s digital information in 2012 would equal to more than 5,100 stacks of iPhone 5 devices that are as tall as the sub continent’s famed Mt Everest,” an EMC-sponsored IDC digital universe study said.

The world’s tallest peak, Mount Everest stands at 8,848 metres.

The study says India’s share of digital information should grow 23-fold between 2012-2020, driven by continued growth of internet usage, social networks, and the falling cost of technology.

“The digital bits captured or created each year in India are expected to grow from 127 EB (exabytes) to 2.9 ZB (zettabytes) between 2012 and 2020,” it added.

One EB has 18 zeroes after one and a ZB has 21 zeroes.

However, less than half a per cent of all digital information is analysed today while 36 per cent would provide valuable insights, the study said.

“India’s digital transformation is happening at a rapid pace exposing gaps in technology investments that exist in enterprises today. Less than half a per cent of digital information is analysed today; business and government need to recognise this and invest in understanding and tapping it,” EMC India and SAARC President Rajesh Janey said in the statement.

The study said that India’s digital universe is growing much faster than available storage.

“While in 2012 only one exabyte of storage capacity was available for every 3.4 exabytes of data, by 2020, data is expected to grow almost thrice to 9.4 exabyte for every exabyte of available storage,” it said.

It also highlighted that India spent  $0.87 per GB to manage data, which is much lower than China, US and Western Europe.

The study said cloud adoption is growing fast and by 2020, 42 per cent of all digital information will be “touched” by the cloud.

“As companies are increasingly under pressure to better manage their business and align closer to their customers’ needs, companies are increasingly turning to highly leveraged storage cloud to enable them to run complex business analytics that can be accessed by a broad range of client devices,” IDC India research director Venu Reddu said.

Source: Agencies