161 exabytes growing at 57% per year

How much information is the world creating and copying in a given year? A new IDC study released by EMC Corporation finds:

• The 2006 digital universe was 161 billion gigabytes (161 exabytes) in size.
• IDC projects a six fold annual information growth from 2006 to 2010.
• While nearly 70% of the digital universe will be generated by individuals by 2010, organizations will be responsible for the security, privacy, reliability and compliance of at least 85% of the information.

161 exabytes equals approximately three million times the information in all the books ever written – or the equivalent of 12 stacks of books, each extending more than 93 million miles from the earth to the sun. According to IDC, the amount of information created and copied in 2010 will surge more than six fold to 988 exabytes, a compound annual growth rate of 57%.