In response to a new study forecasting a 10-fold rise in worldwide data by 2025, global data and storage provider Seagate is advising business leaders and entrepreneurs to expand their focus on the trends driving data growth over the next several years.

They should, says Seagate, examine their business’ course for the future value of data from creation, collection, utilisation and management.

The IDC white paper, Data Age 2025, sponsored by Seagate, predicts data creation will swell to a total of 163 zettabytes (ZB) by 2025; indicating that the decade centered around the conversion of analog ue data to digital is being replaced by an era focused on the value of data; creating, utilising, and managing ‘life-critical’ data necessary for the smooth running of daily life for consumers, governments and businesses alike.

Consumers and businesses creating, sharing and accessing data between any device and the cloud will continue to grow well beyond previous expectations.

Further, whereas once consumers were the primary creators of the bulk of the world’s data, Data Age 2025 predicts this will shift, with enterprises creating 60% of the world’s data in 2025.

Business leaders will have the opportunity to embrace new and unique business opportunities powered by this wealth of data and the insight it provides but will also need to make strategic choices on data collection, utilisation and location.

Virtually every enterprise, the white paper indicates, is being affected by the major data-driving trends.

Notable drivers of the shift from primarily consumer-led to enterprise-driven data include:

• The evolution of data from business background to life-critical – By 2025, nearly 20% of the data in the global datasphere will be critical to our daily lives and nearly 10% of that will be hypercritical.
• Embedded systems and the Internet of Things (IoT) – By 2025, an average connected person anywhere in the world will interact with connected devices nearly 4,800 times per day – basically one interaction every 18 seconds.
• Machine learning changing the landscape – IDC estimates that the amount of the global datasphere subject to data analysis will grow by a factor of 50 to 5.2 ZB in 2025.
• True mobile and real-time data – By 2025, more than a quarter of data created will be real-time in nature, and IoT real-time data will constitute over 95% of it.
• Automation and machine-to-machine technologies shifting the bulk of data creation away from traditional sources – While data creation in the previous 10 years has been characterised primarily by an increase in entertainment content, the coming decade will reflect the shift to productivity-driven and embedded data, as well as non-entertainment images and video such as surveillance and advertising.

“While we can see from this new research that the era of Big Data is upon us, the value of data is really not in the ‘known’, but in the ‘unknown’ where we are vastly underestimating the potentials today.

What is really exciting are the analytics, the new businesses, the new thinking and new ecosystems from industries like robotics and machine-to-machine learning, and their profound social and economic impact on our society,” Seagate CEO, Steve Luczo said.

“The opportunity for today’s enterprises and tomorrow’s entrepreneurs to capture the value of data is tremendous, and our global business leaders will be exploring these opportunities for decades to come.”

IDC SVP, Dave Reinsel said: “From autonomous cars to intelligent personal assistants, data is the lifeblood of a rapidly growing digital existence – opening up opportunities previously unimagined by businesses.

Technology innovation will be vitally important to evaluate and fully activate the intricacies of what’s contained within this large volume of data – and storage in particular will continue to grow in importance, as it provides the foundation from which so many of these emerging technologies will be served.”

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