In today’s piece, we’ll focus all our attention on some of the most mind-boggling big data statistics. For anyone who’s new to the concept of big data, TechJury has prepared a brief intro on the topic.
Big
In today’s piece, we’ll focus all our attention on some of the most mind-boggling big data statistics. For anyone who’s new to the concept of big data, TechJury has prepared a brief intro on the topic.
Big data refers to enormous data sets gathered from numerous sources. These data sets cannot be collected, stored, or processed using any of the existing conventional tools due to their quantity and complexity.
So, there is a variety of tools used to analyze big data – NoSQL databases, Hadoop, and Spark – to name a few. With the help of big data analytics tools, we can gather different types of data from the most versatile sources – digital media, web services, business apps, machine log data, etc.
Big Time Big data statistics
- The big data analytics market is set to reach $103 billion by 2023
- In 2019, the big data market is expected to grow by 20%
- In 2020, every person will generate 1.7 megabytes in just a second
- Internet users generate about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data each day
- As os Semptember, 2019, there are 2.45 billion active Facebook users, and they generate a lot of data
- 97.2% of organizations are investing in big data and AI
- Using big data, Netflix saves $1 billion per year on customer retention
Now, why is big data important? Once analyzed, this data helps in a multitude of ways. In healthcare, it helps avoid preventable diseases by detecting them in their early stages. It is also immensely useful in the banking sector, where it aids in recognizing illegal activities such as money laundering. Finally, in meteorology, it helps study global warming.
Alright! Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s check out some interesting statistics about big data.
1. In 2020, there will be around 40 trillion gigabytes of data (40 zettabytes).
Measuring the amount of data we have today is not an exact science. When going through the numbers related to big data, we found numerous predictions and estimates, but very few numbers we could hold on to. The number of big data growth statistics was also very high. One of the many predictions about the amount of big data came from IDC’s study – “The Digital Universe in 2020”. According to the source, next year, we should have around 40 trillion gigabytes of data, i.e., 40 zettabytes.
The same study suggested that the big data size in 2010 was standing at 1.2 zettabytes. Additionally, IDC gave us another useful piece of information that helped us answer the question of how fast is data growing? The IDC report said that the digital universe would double every two years until 2020. So, we decided to test this. We took the amount of data from 2010 (1.2 zettabytes) and doubled it five times for every two years in a decade.
The result we got was around 38.5 zettabytes, which is pretty much in line with IDC’s forecast for 2020 (40 zettabytes). Now, these are all rough estimates, and so, in 2012, there were 2.8 zettabytes of data (instead of 2.4 zettabytes). Each consecutive estimate is slightly off as well, so take these with a grain of salt.
2. 90% of all data has been created in the last two years.
One of the big data stats that caught our attention came from an IBM study from 2017. It outlined that 90% of all the data in the world back then had been created in the last two years. At first, we were quite surprised to learn that we’ve generated so much data in such a relatively short timeframe. However, once we analyzed the incredible growth of the internet, this started to make sense. In 2012, we had 2.5 billion internet users. In 2014, this number reached the three-billion mark, and in 2019 we have 4.1 billion people online.
Now, one thing is for sure – the amount of data is increasing exponentially over time, and we could say the same for internet users. So, could it really be that we’ve created 90% of all data in just two years? The answer is a resounding yes.
3. Today it would take a person approximately 181 million years to download all the data from the internet.
An interesting piece of information about big data comes from Physics.org that answered the question of how long would it take to download all the data from the internet. The source used the following values: 0.55 zettabytes for all the information on the internet, and 44Mbps as average download speed. However, since these big data statistics have changed, we redid the calculation with 33 zettabytes of data and an average download speed of 46Mbps. The result we got was around 181.3 million years. Impressive, right?
4. In 2012, only 0.5% of all data was analyzed.
(Source: The Guardian)
The vast quantity of big data has no value unless it is tagged or analyzed. So, the question is how much data is that? According to IDC’s Digital Universe Study from 2012, only 0.5% of data is analyzed, while the percentage of tagged data is a bit higher at 3%. By further researching these data analytics statistics we discovered that not all data has the potential to bring value.
In 2017, the Economist claimed that data replaced oil as the world’s most valuable source. There were many sources that compared data to oil while neglecting one big difference between the two. Unlike oil, data can be easily extracted, and the supplies are endless. What’s more, unlike oil, we can use data multiple times and get new insights from it. The comparison between oil and data leads us to the conclusion that we should collect and store as much data as possible. However, if we only do that, without tagging or analyzing the information we have, its value will be far less significant than that of oil.
According to big data statistics from IDC, in 2012 only 22% of all the data had the potential for analysis. This includes data from different fields such as surveillance, entertainment and social media, etc. The same source said that by 2020, the percentage of useful data, i.e., the information that has the potential for analysis, would jump to 37%.
5. Internet users generate about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data each day.
(Source: Data Never Sleeps 5.0)
With the estimated amount of data we should 