Enterprises Will Create 60 Percent of the World's Data in 2025, Says IDC

Looking at the early days of computing, most of the data being created resided with the consumers - in the form of movies, games, and documents, but an IDC study that's been sponsored by storage company Seagate suggests that not only will data creation by 2025 rise tenfold over current levels, but that a greater portion - around 60 percent - will come from enterprises.

Seagate believes that this will no longer be "business background", but "life critical" data that will provide new business opportunities, and be necessary for smooth daily operations for businesses, governments, and consumers alike.

Here are some of the key facts that the IDC study included:

1. By 2025, nearly 20 percent of the data in the global data-sphere will be critical to our daily lives, and nearly 10 percent will be hypercritical.
2. Data creation would have grown 10-times current levels, to 163ZB - or around 163 trillion gigabytes.
3. By 2025, the average person will interact with connected devices nearly 4,800 times per day - one interaction every 18 seconds.
4. A large percentage of this data will be generated by mobile users, which would include not just smartphones but also embedded IoT devices. IDC estimates that more than a quarter of data will be real-time in nature.
5. IoT real time data will constitute 95 percent of all real-time data.
6. Machines talking to each other will account for the bulk of data creation, as automation grows.
7. Data creation in the past 10 years has been dominated by entertainment content. Data in the next 10 years will shift to productivity, as well as surveillance and advertising.
8. In 2015, less than 30 percent of data was created by enterprises, but in 2025 this figure will be nearly 60 percent.
9. From autonomous cars to intelligent personal assistants, new technology will heavily rely on data and connectivity.
10. Although 90 percent of the data being created requires some level of security, less than half will be secured.

According to Seagate, this explosion of data will also lead to a requirement for quality data - and organisations that can identify and focus on the right subsets of data stand to gain tremendously.

You can read the full IDC whitepaper for more details on this topic.