Organizations today are aware that information is an important input for
efficient functioning of their business. What many don't realize is that
information is their most critical business asset. They concentrate their
resources on enhancing and preserving human and financial capital, often
ignoring the need to create a seamless information infrastructure.
How organizations are able to access, manage, leverage and protect their
information, regardless of their size or business, will determine how successful
they will be in a competitive environment. Unless organizations realign their
focus and become information centric, as opposed to technology-centric as they
are today, they will not exist in 2010.
Information Explosion
We are in the midst of an epochal change in the flow and storage of
information, a 50 million-fold growth in the information/access product by 2005.
This huge explosion is being driven by three things: networks (and the need to
share information, thereby replicating it), broadband (the fat pipes that will
enable information to flow seamlessly and at great speed) and emergence of fixed
content (content that does not fit into databases, and are typically heavy like
video, photographs, MRIs and email).
How much data do we generate?
A thousand GB makes a terabyte, a thousand TB is a petabyte. A thousand PB
is an exabyte. That is thus 1 billion GB, or a million TB.
A study estimates that print, film, magnetic, and optical storage media
produced about 5 exabytes of new information in 2002 (5 exabytes equals all
words ever spoken by human beings!)... and new stored information grew about 30%
a year between 1999 and 2002.
It's taken the entire history of humanity through 1999 to accumulate 12
exabytes of information. By the middle of 2002 the second dozen exabytes were
created!
The unprecendented study, "How Much Information?", was conducted by
a research group headed by Professor Hal Varian, Dean of the School of
Information Management and Systems at UC Berkeley, covering print, broadcast,
film, letters and the Internet, focused and based on the 1999.
"We have a phenomenal boom in the production of information," said
Hal Varian. "One in which individuals, not just organizations, are
responsible for generating volumes of data. We not only have mass production of
information, but also production of information by the masses."
This explosion is not just PC or server driven. By 2010 we could see 3
billion cell phones in use, mostly Internet enabled. In 2004, camera phones
outsold digital cameras! Peer-to-peer file sharing is here to stay, even if
Napster isn't. The edges of the traditional network are already getting
blurred thanks to RFID and Bluetooth, and we can expect this trend to
accelerate. Non computer devices are set to generate a huge amount of network
traffic, and the information flow is sure to reverse from the server to the
client, from the network edge to the center.
Chaos Theory
"A picture is worth a thousand words", but it's usually also
worth a couple of megabytes. The growth of information is compounded by the fact
that 80% of all new information is unstructured. Items such as emails, faxes,
presentations, photo archives, web pages, images and even instant messages are
classic examples of this data-type that the Gartner Group estimates constitutes
more than 93% of all business critical material. Gartner also says that trying
to manage or re-purpose unstructured data now consumes as much as 40% of an
office worker's time, or twice as much as it did just five years ago.
The daily flow of information among businesses, along with increasing
regulations requiring businesses to store documents for any number of years,
means fixed content can quickly become an 800-pound gorilla on the back of a
company's storage budget. Enterprises must invest in Content Addressable
Storage (CAS) solutions, to supplement their existing SAN and NAS
infrastructures.
The other big hurdle that enterprises face is universal connectivity and
seamless access to information. As we get more and more connected, we expect
information to be available 24x7x365 regardless of time and distance. The
challenge is that information lies in disparate locations and technical
boundaries exist to limit the free flow of information. By 2010 standards must
evolve to ensure complete technological interoperability.
Info-Management is the Key
Professor Hal Varian ends his report with this: Significant advances will
have to be made in information management before mankind can fully benefit from
the information explosion. "Will we drown in a sea of information, or can
we develop tools to help us swim?" he asks. Our ability to store and
communicate information has far outpaced our ability to search, retrieve and
present it. Information management will turn out to be one of the major
challenges of the new century.
Managing information that is growing at an exponential rate is the first
challenge that we will have to be equipped to deal with in 2010. The reality is
that just storing information-where it cannot be easily accessed-does not
make it valuable. Organizations thrive on information that's alive. You need
to keep information alive within an organization.
The answer lies in four fundamental laws of information:
- The value of information changes over time
- Not all information is created equal
- Information can increase or decrease in value
- Information is usually more valuable than the media it is on
Not all information is the same-they all have different
attributes, different ages, different importance, and differing value. Over
time, the value of information will change. What's most interesting though is
that not all information changes value at the same rate or even the same
direction. As a result, each type or class of information needs to be cared for
in different ways. The users or consumers of a particular type or class of
information expect-and will accept-different response times when they need
to access the information.
It is those differences in what users expect that dictates
the "service levels" that must be applied to care for the information.
These service level requirements really describe the performance required, the
level of availability that's necessary, and the type of functionality that
must be applied. And because these capabilities are not free of cost, the
question of "what service level?" must be answered within the context
of cost.
Many IS managers will be ready to attest that some of their
application data might require high service levels-outstanding performance,
instantaneous recovery-the very best. Other portions data might need
"good" levels. And, over time, more and more of the data will only
require minimal service levels, perhaps archiving. Most apps need a mix of all
three. And as application data moves from development to production to
retirement, the requirements will change. You can't afford to over-configure,
and you really can't afford to under-configure either, so the requirement is
to get it just right.
That is where Information Lifecycle Management comes in. ILM
is a way to map the right service level to the right application at the right
cost... at the right time. ILM is the process that organizations will have to
use to manage the huge volume of information.
Information Economy and Information Age
2010 will clearly see the rise of the Information Economy and our lives
dramatically changing in the Information age. The information economy is a
global economic structure, wherein the production of information goods and
services dominates wealth and job creation, and is underpinned by the use of
information and communications technologies and a global information
infrastructure. By 2010 we will see the radical shift of Economic Enterprises to
Information Industries. The information age will see enterprises, governments
and citizens being empowered and using knowledge as a key tool to achieve growth
in a globalized world. The divide between information haves and have nots will
be bridged. As we jump on the information highway we must be sure that we have
vehicles to travel in and that they are going in the right direction.
Manoj Chugh president, EMC India & SAARC
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