BANGALORE, INDIA: The world maybe shrinking but its information lot is expanding for sure.

Do you know that in 2008 alone, world-over 487 billion gigabytes of information was created and this data will double in every 18 months! It doesn't stop here, by 2012, digital information produced will increase by five times. (IDC's study, ‘Economy Contracts, the Digital Universe Expands’)

This is definitely not going to sound good to CIOs, who are supposed to make room for extra storage devices in the midst of the shrunken IT budgets. Especially, when their mantra 'Do more with less' has changed to 'Do much more with less'!

Ever thought, each one of us out there is lending a hand to this exploding data? Every second we spend time in building networks over social network sites, forward/send e-mails, or SMS, we are adding to this information lot. We would have given it a thought, if only we knew that in the next four years, interactions between people via email, messaging, social networks, etc. - will grow by a factor of 8.0. (IDC)

The list doesn’t end here. According to IDC, mobile users will grow by a factor of 3.0 and over the next four years, 600 million more people will become Internet users. Moreover, nearly two-thirds of all Internet users will use mobile devices, at least some of the time. Non-traditional IT devices such as wireless meters, automobile navigation systems, industrial machines, RFID readers, and intelligent sensor controllers - will grow by a factor of 3.6.

Most of the world's economic stimulus efforts will also increase the amount of digital information created, the result of increased access to broadband communications, electronic patient records, smart electric grids, smart buildings and autos, etc. Moreover, by 2012, Internet commerce will be a $13 trillion industry, mostly involving sensitive business-to-business commerce.

Data Explosion: An Indian perspective
Coming to the third largest economy in APAC and second fastest growing one in the world, India stands no different.

Simon Gregory, business development director, CommVault, says: “Indian companies are growing at a rapid pace today, and so is growing their data volume."

Enterprise IT adoption is a major cause for data explosion. IT applications, i.e. ERP, CRM, etc (43 percent) followed by emails/attachments (19 percent) are the major sources of data growth in enterprises. ('Data Explosion in India - Trends & Challenges', a survey by The Nielsen Company in association with NetApp)

“The increasing data is in turn increasing the operational expenses of a company,” Gregory adds.