Jump to Navigation

Roger Bohn's Research Estimates Global Servers Process 9.57ZB of Data a Year

World's servers process 9.57ZB of data a year

05/09/2011
Lucas Mearian, ComputerWorld

Three years ago, the world's 27 million business servers processed 9.57 zettabytes, or 9,570,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of information.

Researchers at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies and the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California, San Diego, estimate that the total is equivalent to a 5.6-billion-mile-high stack of books stretching from Earth to Neptune and back to Earth, repeated about 20 times.

By 2024, business servers worldwide will annually process the digital equivalent of a stack of books extending more than 4.37 light-years to Alpha Centauri, according to a report compiled by the scientists.

The report, titled "How Much Information?: 2010 Report on Enterprise Server Information," was released at the SNW conference last month.

Roger Bohn, one of the report's co-authors, compared the world's business servers to the underwater portion of an iceberg "that runs the world that we see.

"Most of this information is incredibly transient: it is created, used and discarded in a few seconds without ever being seen by a person," said Bohn, a professor of technology management at UC San Diego.

Click here to read the full article.

Related Links

Roger Bohn can provide commentary on questions about high-tech and international manufacturing, the electronics industry, and the data storage industry. He is a consultant to industry in the areas of manufacturing ramp-up, process improvement, product development, and organizational management.

Similar Stories

Back to Top