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Central Government, Government Security, Technology

Are you ready for the digital Big Bang?

By Rahul Joshi | 7 May 2010

Within the next decade, the volume of data amassed in the world will be equivalent to a stack of DVDs reaching halfway from earth to mars. Data streaming through cables and airwaves will amount to 35 trillion gigabytes by 2020, a 44-fold increase in the volume of information around today.

However, the number of IT professionals will only increase by a factor of 1.4, an EMC-commissioned study has predicted.

The study, called The Digital Universe Decade – Are You Ready?, urged government CIOs to prepare for the impending data boom by developing long-term information management plans, deploying new IT tools for data management and security, and adopting cloud computing as a means to cope with the increased workload.

Ron Goh, President of EMC South Asia, told FutureGov: “Governments are spending on IT incrementally as they manage this information explosion while striving to maintain a high level of services for citizens. The demand for online services is also increasing and you can see that governments in Asia are driving the adoption of cloud computing to fulfill the necessary requirements.”

By 2020, 15 per cent of all the data will be associated with Cloud Computing. The security paradigm will have to shift in a significant way, as half of all data will need to be protected beyond simple anti-virus software.

The study also revealed that only 25 per cent of all data is unique; 75 per cent of it, therefore, is a copy. This excessive redundancy is likely to persist, and CIOs will have to organise information in a much more effective way, Goh added.

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