Are you ready for the Digital Decade? 

We’re one-third of the way through 2010, and already it's been a year of impressive technological feats. Now, we’re better equipped than ever to create, edit, share and copy digital content. However, amidst all the excitement, there’s one detail most people overlook – all that media has to be stored somewhere!

Obviously, this trend has very interesting implications for a storage company like LaCie. The pro analysts over at IDC recently released an update to their “Digital Universe Decade” report, which outlines how much content will be consumed – and thus, stored – over the next 10 years.

You may be nervously wondering – just how much content should we anticipate?

In this year alone, IDC estimates that the world will create 1.2 zettabytes of digital information. Three magnitudes above the industry-leading terabyte, a zettabyte is the equivalent of one trillion gigabytes (or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes – a whole darn lot of storage).

To put things in perspective, IDC outlines a few real-world examples to illustrate this year’s mass of data creation.

The amount of digital information created in 2010 (1.2 zettabytes) will equal:

• 75 billion fully-loaded 16 GB Apple iPads, which would fill the Taipei 101 Tower 23 times, or
• A full-length episode of FOX TV's hit series “24” running continuously for 125 million years.

However, if you think 2010 sounds like a BIG year in storage, you had better brace yourself. The statistics on the upcoming “Digital Decade” are astounding. Over the next 10 years, we’ll create so much digital content that IDC projects we’ll grow our data creation by a factor of 44!

So hypothetically, if you created 16GB of data (enough to fill up your new iPad and keep it snug in your stylin’ ForMoa case, perhaps?) in 2010, you’d be on track to have 9.5781e⁵² GB in 2020. You would need 5.9863e⁵¹ iPads and ForMoas to fit all that data. Note those exponents, folks – we’re talking mindboggling amounts of digital content. 

This might sound like a lot of data to digest, but it also means we’re standing at an exciting threshold for storage. Not long ago, it was a big deal for storage manufacturers to cram 1GB of storage into a consumer hard drive. The days of room-consuming storage servers are not that far back in the textbooks. In fact, to take a trip down memory lane, jog over to eWeek and peruse the “50 Years of Hard Drive History” slideshow compiled by senior writer Chris Preimesberger. A few highlights follow, below.

So, with all the progress made in the past few decades in storage capacities ­– just think of our tiny Rikiki, a powerful 500GB mobile drive in an ultra-compact form factor – it’s exciting to think about what the future may bring.

Plus, we’re excited by the possibilities of cloud storage and our partnership with Wuala. IDC predicts that cloud storage will become increasingly significant in the next decade. A cloud can become instantly expanded to add storage without fuss, so it makes sense for individuals and corporations alike who don’t want the hassle of switching and upgrading solid-state HDDs as technology advances ­– and as they run out of consumable space. But why wait until 2020 to claim your space in the cloud? Sign up for your Wuala account today and beat the rush.

We have a slogan at LaCie that we like to use on T-shirts and tradeshow banners – “Solution Evolution.” As we move into the forthcoming Digital Decade, you’ll see how dedicated LaCie is to embracing that mantra. We’ll be right there at the technological forefront, bringing our customers products that seamlessly fit their increasing storage and multimedia demands. Even when it amounts to several zettabytes, we’ll still have all the tools to help you manage your digital life.