Tweet

How Does Our Storage Volume Grow?

Written by: Andy Marken

Article Overview: Wonder why your hard drive is always full? Wonder how you can find files in the 200GB HD? It's called a data explosion for a good reason.

How Does Our Storage Volume Grow?

There has been more information produced in the last 30 years than during the previous 5,000. A weekday edition of The New York Times contains more information than the average person was likely to come across in a lifetime during the 17th-century England. The information supply available to us doubles every five years -- Richard Saul Wurman, Information Anxiety.


Observations such as Wurman’s highlights why we feel as though we are suffering from information overload, why information is increasingly valuable to individuals and organizations and why computer storage is growing is becoming so vital.

But his statements also beg the question…Where is all of this information coming from?

We aren’t creating new words. We aren’t developing that many new ideas. Instead, information is being replicated, distributed and manipulated. To make this data manageable and useful, we have developed "meta data" –data about data. In recent years, available data and the need for data has increased at an accelerated pace, and as Wurman notes … it will continue to increase.

To understand the volume, the use and value of the data to an organization, consider:
• No technology in history has grown as quickly as the Internet. Backbone bandwidth demand has been doubling, not every 18 months as with Moore’s law, but every 3.5 months. That’s a 10X growth or 1,000% a year. Voice grows at 8 percent. By next year, half of the bandwidth in the world will be Internet. Half everything else. By 2003, the Internet will be more than 90% of the bandwidth. By 2004, more than 99%. While adding new subscribers has driven Internet growth to date, next we're going to move audio, video & multimedia data to the Internet
• According to Forrester Research, Web commerce will grow from $14.8 billion in 1999 to $500 billion in 2001. Cost savings globally through business use of e-commerce will rise from $17 billion in 1998 to $175 trillion in 2002. The number of devices accessing the Web will grow from 32 million worldwide in 1996 to more than 300 million by 2001. Users will grow from 28 million in that year to more than 500 million in 2001.
• Every time a customer can get support through a Web-based support system, the cost is microscopic compared to a voice-response unit or human intervention according to META Group. The typical customer service transaction is $5 for a live call center agent, 50 cents for voice response and a few cents on the Web.
• Firms that have implemented Web-based activities are increasing productivity and reducing costs including:
 Intel’s Web-based automation has relieved 200 sales clerks from entering data so they can concentrate on analyzing sales trends and working with customers as customers input their own requirements and orders
 Cisco handles 75% of their sales online. 45% of the orders never touch an employee’s hands, going directly to manufacturing partners. As a result of their Web-based activities, productivity has improved 20% over the past two years.
 Intel, Dell and Cisco produce over $70 million in sales online business every day
 $800 million plane tickets sold over Web in '98. This will climb to $8.9 billion in 2002...Jupiter Communications. On-line book sales will grow from $216 million to $2.2 billion
 National Semi saves $20 million a year by steering distributors to order product on-line.
 Boeing books $100 million in spare parts from airlines in '97.

• Email, which has flattened organizations and improved internal and external communications, has also increased the volume of data sent and received:
 Some 3.4 trillion email messages were delivered in the U.S. in 1998
 Daily the total number of e-mail messages sent by U.S. Internet users is 2.1 billion
 Another 3.7 billion “commercial” email messages are sent daily – more than 96% represent spam
 105 million Americans use email at least occasionally
 High-tech workers get more than 200 messages per day
 On average, people receive twice as many emails as they send

Communications technology is rapidly changing the speed, direction and amount of information flow, even as it alters work roles all across organizations. -- Rich Tetzeli, Surviving Information Overload, Fortune Magazine, July 11, 1994.

All of these new applications require a lot more storage and a lot more availability. While the storage initiative decision used to be made on the basis of cost per MB, determinations will be made on the basis of information/data management costs. Managing Terabytes of data on fluid magnetic media is a never-ending challenge and ongoing cost, whereas management cost on stable optical media – CD, DVD or MO – with automation software is more predictable, more projectable…and the cost/MB is lower.
# # #

Related Articles
  Reasons your business needs self storage
  What is a reasonable cost model for providing a 3PL warehouse management service (Survey Result 1)
  More Data Footprint Reduction (DFR) Material
  The Benefits of Fusion Marketing Your Self Storage Facility with Other Local Businesses
  The data storage prayer

Article Tags:



Related Forum Posts
How does one suggest improvements to inventions - and get paid for them? I'm sure people write in and complain and suggest new features for various things they buy... and if those changes are implemented that's all well and good, but the person who made the suggestion for the improvment isn't going to get paid for it. How does one suggest these improvements - and get paid for them? ----long story One of the best things the PC did (at least, Dell) was to color code all their little plugs, so you know that the green plug goes into the green hole, the pink into the pink, etc. Makes setting up those things a heckuva lot easier! I was thinking that the same thing should be done for today's TVs! I've had a new TV for a few weeks, set up next to my computer because I like to work and watch TV at the same time. But I've got it set up in such a way that I can't see all the little buttons on the top of the screen, which are the buttons for Stop, Play, Eject (for the internal DVD) , the Volume up and down, and the Channel up and down. Of course, that wasn't a problem when my remote control worked, but for some reason it stopped working a couple of weeks ago. (Yes, I replaced the battery - no good). Since I have the TV so close to my computer it's no problem, I can reach out and touch the buttons... But because they're all the same color, I had to actually get up and look at them to make sure I was pressing the right button. I've solved that problem by attaching a bit of yellow paper to the Play button, and a bit of orange paper to the Volume Up button. Makes things a lot easier...
Re: My 3 best business books - 1. Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill 2. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen R. Covey 3. Permission Marketing - Seth Godin Think and Grow Rich seems more powerful each time I read it or dip into it. The 7 Habits not only offers some very effective ways to organize your life (which I have yet to master!), but also some great quotations and thought provoking statements including this by Nazi concentration camp survivor, Viktor Frankl: [i:2naxzsom]Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.[/i:2naxzsom] Seth Godin's Permission Marketing is a good read for anybody seeking to understand how to approach doing business on the Internet in the right way with regard to winning people's trust.
Re: My 3 best business books - It seems that Napoleon Hill works help a lot of business men. He had done a really good job. I bought Think and Grow Rich many times.
Think and Grow Rich - Hi Moira, What a great post! I completely agree with it and it really is too easy to underestimate those 3 points but once we learn to use them the sky is the limit. I am currently reading Think and Grow Rich by Napolean Hill. Have you read that book?
Re: 2010 - Big goals or scaled back? - I'm not in his league but I'm with Trent on this one. I have just pulled Think And Grow Rich off my shelf for this quotation: ** [i:3najfws9]The "depression" was a blessing in disguise. It reduced the whole world to a new starting point that gives every one a new opportunity. [/i:3najfws9]


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

LEARNING TO HAVE FUN – EVERYDAY!

Induction – your first management job

Unharnessing Creativity in Business

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.