Are we losing data?

No, not really. But according to an eMarketer email I received today titled The Data Dump, the US and UK are generating 9 exabytes more than we have available storage for (oops). Fortunately, not all of that data gets stored, but it certainly gets my attention. An even more interesting part of the article was the attitude of managers toward data accessibility and usefulness within the company. Evidently, data storage is not the only hurdle businesses have to face.

The article hit home with me because it was related to our recent post addressing faster response to emails (Fast Email Responses = Happy Customers). In the post we talk about organizing email (essential data) by assigning categories and references (tags) to help businesses react more quickly to customer needs.

In any case, today I learned a new word: exabytes. According to Wikipedia, an exabyte (EB) is a unit of information or computer storage equal to one quintillion bytes (huh?). Ok, put into perspective it equals 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. Still lost? Me too, but it is definately a lot of data. Here's to generating a few more bytes.

BTW. Found this article a few days after posting this message. Lots' of interesting facts about what type of data we actually create: Information and the Web Worker