The Information Professional

Sue McKemmish & Andrew Wilson:

"It’s estimated that in 2011 a truly staggering 1.8 zettabytes of digital information was created. Or to put it in more meaningful terms, that’s 57.5 billion 32-gigabyte iPads full.

Recent articles about this “digital deluge” warn of an approaching “digital dark age” if this vast amount of digital information isn’t preserved for posterity.

The old refrain that “storage is cheap, just keep everything” was never true. Recently the global market intelligence firm IDCestimated that the world’s demand for storage is increasing by 60% a year.

Given market research firm IHS iSuppli estimates hard disk storage densities will only improve by 19% a year for the next five years, and IT budgets are growing at an annual rate between 0 and 2%, there is clearly a looming storage crisis.

The challenges involved in preserving the huge datasets created by governments, businesses and research institutions have prompted some dire predictions about the loss of digital history."