Data creation is in overdrive. Despite the unimaginably large capacity described by the terms gigabyte and terabyte, these are no longer enough to express the gargantuan amounts of data being generated today. According to IDC, the quantity of global digital data generated in 2010 was more than 1.2 zettabytes.
Just to put it into perspective, a zettabyte equals one trillion gigabytes. This number is not only mindboggling, it's expected to continue increasing; IDC predicts that digital data generated per year will reach almost eight zettabytes in 2015. As IDC Chief Research Officer John F. Gantz puts it, the digital universe is more than doubling every two years.