Came across an interesting article. Big data is on a roll now…
Data is being generated about the activities of people and inanimate objects on a massive and increasing scale. We examine how much data is involved, how much might be useful, what tools and techniques are available to analyse it, and whether businesses are actually getting to grips with big data.
Computing's 'Big Bang' moment came during World War 2, in the shape of the world's first programmable digital computer, Colossus. Built at the UK's Bletchley Park codebreaking centre to help break the German High Command's Lorenz cipher, Colossus could store 20,000 5-bit characters (~125KB) and input data at 5,000 characters per second via paper tape (~25Kbps). Small data in today's terms perhaps, but Colossus decrypts made a vital contribution to the Allied planning for D-Day, in particular.
The Digital Universe
In December 2012, IDC and EMC estimated the size of the digital universe (that is, all the digital data created, replicated and consumed in that year) to be 2,837 exabytes (EB) and forecast this to grow to 40,000EB by 2020 — a doubling time of roughly two years. One exabyte equals a thousand petabytes (PB), or a million terabytes (TB), or a billion gigabytes (GB). So by 2020, according to IDC and EMC, the digital universe will amount to over 5,200GB per person on the planet.
http://www.zdnet.com/big-data-an-overview-7000020785/
