As Data Capacity Soars Data Growth Anchors it Down
Hard drives have been getting bigger (capacity-wise) and cheaper over the past decade which is great news for everyone. Toshiba predicts that in 2012 that over 2 zettabytes (2 trillion gigabytes!) of data will be created and replicated (double from 2010). While costs are going down, data growth is still a challenge for data centers and IT administrators.
The past few years have had some pretty exciting challenges for the IT industry with great new technologies emerging and new trends as businesses try to shave costs as the economy ebbs and flows. One of the trends we are seeing is very consistent rate of data growth. On average, data capacity needs in businesses are growing (as much as 40%-60% per year) which means data centers and offsite storage centers need to account for that as well.
This is not just something data centers need to account for, but businesses as well. If you are planning to implement a new server, data growth needs to be considered. You'll want your infrastructure to be very flexible so it can withstand your needs. If your storage infrastructure isn't flexible enough to contend with your data capacity growth, you could get hampered with expensive upgrade costs.