Tom Foremski points to a recent IDC study over at Silicon Valley Watcher: IDC: We face a looming crisis - we won’t have anywhere to store hundreds of exabytes of data.

The title says it all. According to IDC’s estimates, the world will produce 988 exabytes of data in 2010 - but only 601 exabytes of storage will be available.

Oops, if this is true, I’m in trouble with my push for on-demand.

But somehow I’m not worried:

• Last I checked, data storage was not a natural resource, it is manufactured. Why wouldn’t market forces take care of balancing demand and supply?
• Just where exactly would the excess “data” exist? Right now I am typing this post - but if I don’t save / post / send it, it does not get stored, it won’t become data - it won’t exist at all. (for simplicity forget caching and autosave). Does IDC count our thoughts as data?

Something does not compute.

(Disclaimer: I have not seen the original report, only secondary sources, like the AP news item referred above)

Update (3/06): It’s worth pointing out that the move to an on-demand model will actually reduce storage requirements: since we work natively online, it will be easier to share / link, we don’t have to send redundant copies of the same file.

Tags: storage, data storage, idc, research, analysts