Information overload to exceed predictions

The global data load is expected to rise to 35 billion terabytes by 2020

An IDC analyst has warned that upcoming estimates of the explosion in data traffic are hugely underestimated.

IDC analyst Frank Gens warned at the Citrix Synergy 2010 event that the current increase in data loads is just the start, and that predictions of how heavy it will get are unreliable.

The analyst firm's research suggests that the global data load will rise from 0.8 zettabytes in 2009 to 35 zettabytes in 2020, but that even this might understate the case. A zettabyte is equal to one billion terabytes.

"These figures are wrong in my opinion. They are too low," he said.

Such data flows would overwhelm companies not set up to cope with the volumes of information, Gens said, and the only way to do that is to focus on scalable, virtual computing resources.

IT administrators had to move away from maintaining limited physical systems to a virtual computing environment, he said.

Dell founder and chief executive Michael Dell agreed that the estimates may be too low. "The increases in data will blow that research away," he said. " It's going to be double that easily."