In 2015 there will be the equivalent of eight Great Walls of
China full of data; emerging from structured corporate information
systems, from social networks, emails, GPS coordinates from mobile
phones, eftpos transactions, sensors attached to everything from
cows (true!) to electricity meters.
By next year the combined data storage of the planet will be
almost eight zettabytes. To get a feel for how big that is—if
the takeaway coffee cup on your desk is equivalent to a gigabyte of
information, a zettabyte is equivalent to the Great Wall of China
according to communications company Cisco.
By 2020 there will be more things connected to the internet than
there are people on the planet. Best estimates suggest that as many
as 50 billion devices will be connected by then. It's a lot of
data waiting to be explored and exploited.
