Research

Internet of Things Data To Top 1.6 Zettabytes by 2020

• By Rhea Kelly
• 04/15/15

The volume of data captured by the Internet of Things (IoT) will exceed 1.6 zettabytes by 2020, according to a recent forecast from ABI Research. That's a seven-fold increase from last year's 200 exabytes of data collected by IoT devices. Still, only a small portion of that data has been accessible for analytics.

"The data originating from connected products and processes follows a certain journey of magnitudes," explained Principal Analyst Aapo Markkanen in a press release. "The yearly volumes that are generated within endpoints are counted in yottabytes, but only a tiny fraction of this vast data mass is actually being captured for storage or further analysis. And of the captured volume, on average over 90 percent is stored or processed locally without a cloud element, even though this ratio can vary greatly by application segment. So far, the locally dealt data has typically been largely inaccessible for analytics, but that is now starting to change."

According to the report, "the IoT is currently undergoing a major paradigm shift from cloud computing toward edge computing. On one hand, this shift is opening up edge-based data to meaningful analysis, by distributing the analytic workloads across the network. On the other hand, it is also shoring up the cloud-level capabilities by making the transmitted data more actionable, by enriching and contextualizing the payloads."

"Edge computing is a huge challenge for the entire IoT value chain, as we can see from the way that cloud platforms, analytics vendors, and gateway suppliers are scrambling to collaborate with each other," noted Practice Director Dan Shey. "It is also a great opportunity for various software and hardware players that have been working towards this goal even far before the IoT as a concept became fashionable."