IDC Global Research. What does the data market expect in the next 5 years?

IDC has conducted a global data market survey for 2020 and forecasts for the next five years.

For the last year, humanity generated 64.2 zettabytes of data, but saved only 2%. That is, the rest 98% of the data were temporary –their existence was one-time. Analysts attribute the increase in the amount of data that users create, transmit and consume to the pandemic and the transition to remote operation.

IDC is confident that data generation will grow faster than storage. It is expected that more than twice as much data will be generated in these five years as in all the time since the advent of digital storage. The only question is how much generated data will be safe?

According to the latest data, global Internet traffic will increase by 23% annually. The fastest growing segment of data is the Internet of Things. It is followed by social networks and services. However, it should be noted that analysts did not take into account the information obtained from video surveillance systems. 

IDC experts also noted that the amount of data generated in the corporate segment will grow twice as fast as in the consumer segment. After all, the popularity of clouds for storing and using data is growing. 

If we talk about the data storage segment, the average annual growth rate of storage worldwide is projected at 19.2%. Although not all created data is stored (and should not be), still increasing the rate of data production provokes an increase in storage capacity. Thus, in 2020, the capacity of repositories around the world was 6.7 ST (1021 bytes).