For people that use the Internet, the digital world is expressed in kilobytes (103), megabytes (106) and gigabytes (109). For IT professionals, the digital world is represented by terabytes (1012) and petabytes (1015). For forward-thinking enterprises, the digital world is now exabytes (1018) and zettabytes (1021) in size. The amount of digital data created or replicated in 2010 broke the zettabyte threshold. The big-data age has arrived.
So what does the zetta-flood mean to our digital future? Managing gargantuan levels of data will be increasingly frustrating due to the complexities and costs of maintaining internal information technology environments. By 2020, the number of data files is projected to grow as much as 75 times, compared to 1.5 times growth of the available pool of IT professionals. As a result, organizations are looking to the promises of cloud computing and its providers. Outsourcing of data to massive, centralized data centers seems to be the answer in a world where more things are connected to the Internet than people. Analysts predict the number of Internet-connected things will reach 50 billion by 2020, which equates to more than six devices for every person on earth.
To most people cloud computing is as amorphous as its name suggests. It is not hard to comprehend that most zetta-data will be stored in the cloud due to economies of scale and the decreasing cost of virtualized mega-servers in super data centers. However, the “cloud” is much more than storage alone. It also entails security, connectivity, portability, access and other issues including privacy, legal and regulatory. Upgrades to legacy systems, like the 50-year old Internet, and legacy processes will not work. Recent security breaches at major government agencies and large corporations indicate ongoing vulnerability. Leading data carries, like Comcast, are now limiting the amount of data that subscribers can use on a monthly basis. A new, holistic approach is needed for the zetta-data era.
Jobenomics is working with leading technologists to architect a next generation information and financial services platform, called MetroCore. MetroCore is a platform designed to integrate the financial and application services across the digital landscape. Through the integration of applications with financial processing the MetroCore platform could transform the way global, national, regional and local communities-of-interest conduct business. MetroCore has robust, trans-sector, multiple-use infrastructure systems that are capable of supporting today’s and tomorrow’s communications, information, utility, health care, environmental, energy and other advanced services.
The zetta-flood, big-data era will require innovative architectures, like MetroCore, that will measure, report, control, and settle value streams by bridging the gaps among today’s silo systems. Not only will this make America more competitive in the global marketplace, it will enable the creation of millions of small, emerging and self-employed US businesses that will be able to compete internationally as well.
