Data Age 2025: The Evolution of Data to Life-Critical | Rohan Girdhani

Executive Summary about Data

Data Growth, Business Opportunities, and the IT Imperatives

The Digital Universe

the world made up of data — is expected to continue on a steep increase. The next half-decade would witness yearly expansions of 26%, a reduction from the 40% year-on growth predicted for the preceding decade.

As with the previous forecast, realities may outgrow expectations as businesses and individuals alike are increasingly making use of the internet to perform even the most basic tasks (data size of 44 zettabytes was predicted to be captured between 2010 to 2020 but more than 59 zettabytes were actually the case).

Increases in the datasphere present opportunities in magnitude previously not witnessed.

The digital universe, a world of many digital bits, grew by 5,000% from 2010 when it had just only 1.2 zettabytes captured.

And likened to the physical universe, the captured digital data gets steeply numerous — the data expected to be created for the next three years would outnumber those created within the last thirty years! The numbers of digital devices have steadily been a multiple of the human population, and by 2024 the population of digital data will reach 175 zettabytes or 175 trillion gigabytes.

The 5 billion people who interact with data every day, do that in diverse ways.

The transmission and consumption of video content, one with a majority contribution to the data figure is one such way.

The student sitting in the comfort of his room replying to WhatsApp messages, the VOIP telephone conversations made by some packets of business CEOs, the government personnel in a video conference discussing serious issues of state, and the thousands of bankers overseeing and updating the millions of transactions made by bank customers all engage within the digital universe.

While the physical universe is maintained by hardware — items, objects which could be physically held, felt — it is the software upon which interactions of data within the digital realm occur.

Management and control of these exponentially growing data are left for the software, and these man-made programs or system of programs is significant towards making money go round, in fostering the entertaining Netflix videos watched directly from our apartments and even ensuring the obedient response from our smartwatches.

It is also through this created construct within the digital universe that physical opportunities are realized, the opportunities sprouting increasingly with the data population.

The theme for this year’s study by IDC in collaboration with Seagate is Data Age 2025: The Evolution of Data to Life-Critical. The fact that data has been an important aspect of human life, changing the way individuals and organizations are informed and entertained is being recognized.

And as more of the world goes online, more quantities of data are created, captured, and replicated within the physical world, the growth of it limitless as time goes on. IDP summarizes the trends that would improve the role of data in our reformative physical universe in five headings.

In the first aspect considered, The evolution of data from business background to life-critical, IDC predicts that advances in computing powers of computers and the ensuing increasing applications in the physical scene would lead to vital prospects of data to our daily lives.

Estimates are that by 2025, nearly 20% of the data in the digital space will be critical to human's everyday life with 10% of that being hypercritical.

Embedded systems and the Internet of Things (IoT) detail the significance of big data, and its ensuing metadata to endpoint gadgets embedded with computing ability.

The more these embedded devices continue fostering massive data interaction, the subsequent data derived from these data ensures improvements in the systems.

An example is seen in a website’s employment of user browsing preferences to enhance the enhancement of the browsing experience. IDC predicts that by 2025, an average individual will be interacting with devices about 4,800 times each day.

The third aspect, Mobile and real-time data concern the global shift from stored data to real-time data.

From entertainment to the manufacturing industry, there is noticeable dependence on data in real-time.

Video content is now increasingly being watched in real-time by way of streaming rather than from storages done in prior times.

And the increased need for these would require more responsive endpoint devices, mainly IoT devices. Predicted is that by 2025 more than a quarter of data created would be in real-time, with IoT taking 95% of it.

Cognitive data would be imperative to improving industrial and consumer processes. IDC predicts an influx of Cognitive/artificial intelligence (AI) systems that will change the datasphere landscape.

Fairly used in present time processes like fraud detection, facial recognition, and automated driving, IDC predicts an increased inclusion of AI systems in processes. By 2025, two-third of financial institutions are estimated to rely on AI assistance.

The last aspect considered in the report, Security as a critical foundation, considers protection for the enormous data created.

Outlined was the vulnerability of certain data types including digital video streaming, public website content, and digital photos.

The incessant cases of pilferages of personal content of Individuals on the internet speak less of the ability of enterprises to protect data, which is increasing each day.