Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Three Numbers Presage A Crisis


Bill McKibben's Rolling Stone article "Global Warming's Terrifying New Math" is essential reading. The sub-head describes it:
Three simple numbers that add up to global catastrophe - and that make clear who the real enemy is.
Inspired by Bill, here are three numbers I've cited before that indicate we're heading for a crisis in digital storage:
  • According to IDC, the demand for storage is growing about 60%/year.
  • According to IHS iSuppli, the bit density on the platters of disk drives will grow about 20%/yr for the next 5 years. In the past, increases in bit density have led to corresponding drops in $/GB.
  • According to computereconomics.com, IT budgets in recent years have grown between 0%/year and 2%/year.
Something is going to give, and I doubt it will be the budget.

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