Data Growth Slowing Overall

One of the bedrock notions we have lived with since the mid-1990’s has been the concept of “data explosion” in the enterprise. The widely-propagated theme is that enterprise data is roughly “doubling annually”. But if the recent Unisphere Research survey among information management professionals subscribing to our publication “Database Trends and Applications” is accurate, not only are we well past the era of “exponential data growth” but apparently, we are now past the era of “data doubling annually” as well. In fact, in our study, completed in December and named “Today’s Top Data Management Challenges”, we found that two-thirds of DBTA readers reported data increasing from 0-24% in their organizations last year, with 60% forecasting that level of growth this year.

This doesn’t imply that organizations aren’t dealing with the proverbial “fire hoses of data” because data has been growing rapidly over the past ten years. And there certainly are high growth organizations as well as merged organizations that are dealing with a new flood of information.  But a slower economy and other factors seem to have put us on the down side of the curve when it comes to data growth….and that is new information that has come to light.

The study was sponsored by GoldenGate Software and conducted for us by my former business partner and friend, Dr. Elliot King. Let me know if you would like a copy of the Executive Summary.