These 20 Big Data Facts Are Mind-Boggling

Are you still in big data denial treating it as a concept you can ignore? If you are, you are probably about to be run over by the steamroller that is big data. Don’t believe it? A recent Forbes article listed some startling stats that should change your mind. They include: 1. More data has been created in the past two years than in the entire previous history of the human race. 2. By the year 2020, about 1.7 megabytes of new information will be created every second for every human being on the planet. 3. By then, our accumulated digital universe of data will grow from 4.4 zettabytes today to around 44 zettabytes, or 44 trillion gigabytes. 4. Every second we create new data. For example, we perform 40,000 search queries every second (on Google alone), which makes it 3.5 searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year. 5. In Aug 2015, over 1 billion people used Facebook in a single day. 6. Facebook users send on average 31.25 million messages and view 2.77 million videos every minute. 7. We are seeing a massive growth in video and photo data, where every minute up to 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube alone. 8. In 2015, a staggering 1 trillion photos will be taken and billions of them will be shared online. By 2017, nearly 80% of photos will be taken on smart phones. 9. This year, over 1.4 billion smart phones will be shipped – all packed with sensors capable of collecting all kinds of data, not to mention the data the users create themselves. 10. By 2020, we will have over 6.1 billion smartphone users globally. 11. Within five years there will be over 50 billion smart connected devices in the world, all developed to collect, analyze and share data. 12. By 2020, at least a third of all data will pass through the cloud (a network of servers connected over the Internet). 13. Distributed computing (performing computing tasks using a network of computers in the cloud) is very real. Google uses it every day to involve about 1,000 computers in answering a single search query, which takes no more than 0.2 seconds to complete. 14. The Hadoop (open source software for distributed computing) market is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate 58% surpassing $1 billion by 2020. 15. Estimates suggest that by better integrating big data, healthcare could save as much as $300 billion a year — that’s equal to reducing costs by $1000 a year for every man, woman, and child. 16. The White House has already invested more than $200 million in big data projects. 17. For a typical Fortune 1000 company, just a 10% increase in data accessibility will result in more than $65 million additional net income. 18. Retailers who leverage the full power of big data could increase their operating margins by as much as 60%. 19. 73% of organizations have already invested or plan to invest in big data by 2016. 20. And one of my favorite facts: At the moment less than 0.5% of all data is ever analyzed and used, just imagine the potential here. EcoBlu Analyst subscribers have not only imagined the potential, they have harnessed it to make smarter, more economical, and faster environmental project decisions utilizing the most recent data available. What are you waiting for? Subscribe to EcoBlu Analyst here or watch an EcoBlu Analyst demonstration HERE.