The global installed raw storage capacity (byte density) will increase from 2,596 Exabytes (EB) in 2012 to 7,235 EB in 2017, IDC said.
The growth will be driven by rapid use of data.
IDC says traditional, low-cost tape and optical storage solutions for long-term archiving and content delivery are being displaced as businesses place more data online and as consumers stream and store more data from and in the cloud.
The requests for data coming from billions of mobile devices around the world demand that data be centralized and available at all times. On top of this, each country differs on how prepared it is to capitalize on the value of its own strategic data based on its raw installed base of storage, especially enterprise storage, which continues to grow in strategic importance.
IDC suggested that businesses must be aware of these big data/analytic discoveries because they will drive optimization within existing businesses, offer new vectors of growth for mature businesses, and birth new businesses altogether. In addition, these discoveries will drive new sources of revenue for those that own the data.
