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What is a Zettabyte?
What is a Zettabyte?
A zettabyte is a unit of measurement used by technology professionals and the public to describe a computer or device's storage capacity. The number of bytes equals 2 to the 70th power, also expressed as 1 sextillion bytes. One zettabyte is roughly equal to 1,000 exabytes or 1 billion terabytes.
- 1 zettabyte is equal to 1,000 exabytes (EB)
- 1 zettabyte is equal to 1,000,000 petabytes (PB)
- 1 zettabyte is equal to 2 to the power of 70 bytes
- 1 zettabyte could store around 250 billion songs or 500 trillion pages of text
- 1 zettabyte could store over 200 billion 5 MB photos
- 1 zettabyte could store about 13,300 years' worth of HD video content
- One thousand zettabytes equals one yottabyte
Measurement Standards
The measurement zettabyte (ZB), along with other metric amounts, is determined by the International Electrotechnical Commission, an organization responsible for international standards and conformity assessment for computer and electronic technologies. It sets standards across technology, including measurements for computer storage.
How Zettabytes are Measured?
As a unit of measurement for the storage of computer information, zettabytes measure data in binary form, the language used by most computers to interpret and synthesize information.
Binary System in Zettabyte Measurement
The binary system in mathematics is used to translate regular numerals and characters to a system that a computer can understand and that can easily be electronically transferred. Binary is made up of groups of digits that are all either ones or zeros and in combinations of sets of 8. The varying combinations of sequences of bits are codes that correlate to different letters and characters.
Zettabyte Usage and Scale
Zettabytes describe data storage of extremely large amounts of information and code, also referred to by technology professionals as big data. Big data might include a lot of structured or unstructured data that is collected daily at rapid speeds.
Factors Contributing to the Zettabyte
As a specific example of the large volume of a zettabyte, the installed base of storage capacity in 2020 has been estimated at 6.7 ZB, while total data created or replicated in 2020 was 64.2 ZB.
Increased Video Streaming
There is significant consumption of multimedia, especially video streaming, which has played a key role in the Zettabyte Era. In 2011, video streaming accounted for 25%40% of IP traffic, which has now nearly doubled to 73%. Cisco forecasts that video will represent 82% of all IP traffic by 2021.
The amount of data used by video streaming depends on the resolution. For instance, 240p to 320p videos use about 0.3 GB per hour, and 4K videos use around 7.2 GB per hour.
Leading Video Streaming Services
In 2016, Netflix represented 32.72% of global video streaming traffic, followed by YouTube at 17.31% and Amazon Prime Video at 4.14%.
Netflix Usage
Netflix is the largest paid video streaming platform in the world, available in over 200 countries with more than 80 million subscribers. Streaming HD video through Netflix takes up 3 GB of data per hour, while standard definition uses 1 GB. In North America, during peak hours, Netflix occupies 40% of the total network bandwidth.
YouTube Usage
YouTube, responsible for 20% of total internet traffic and 40% of mobile traffic in 2016, continues to increase its data usage. By 2018, 300 hours of video content were uploaded to YouTube every minute.
Increased Wireless and Mobile Traffic
The use of mobile technologies for accessing IP networks has caused a rise in IP traffic. In 2016, most devices moving IP traffic were wired, but wireless and mobile traffic have grown and are predicted to represent 63% of all traffic by 2021. Smartphone traffic is expected to overtake PC traffic by 2021, with PCs making up 25% of total traffic, down from 46% in 2016.
Increased Broadband Speeds
Broadband, which connects users to the internet, is directly related to IP trafficthe faster the broadband, the more data can traverse IP networks. Broadband speeds are expected to double by 2021. In 2016, global average fixed broadband speeds reached 27.5 Mbit/s and are projected to hit 53 Mbit/s by 2021. High-bandwidth applications require faster broadband speeds, and technologies like Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) and DSL make this possible. FTTH can provide speeds up to a hundred times faster than DSL or cable.
Future Predictions for Zettabyte Growth
IDC has predicted that by 2025, there will be 175 zettabytes of data that need storage. It will take a combination of cloud, disk, flash, and tape to store all of that data.
AI in Big Data Operations
The scale of big data and the internet of things is so massive that many operations occur via artificial intelligence (AI), with little to no human intervention or direction. AI within big data systems may analyze zettabytes' worth of data and perform other actions like decision-making, translating, speech recognition, pattern recognition, or machine learning.
FAQ's on Zettabyte
1. What is the size of a zettabyte?
A zettabyte represents 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (10) bytes of digital storage.
2. What is causing the exponential growth of enterprise data?
Enterprises are under pressure to digitize operations, generate more metrics for data-driven decisions, and retain data longer due to stricter security and privacy regulations. This drives the growing demand for data storage.
3. How much did the global stored capacity reach in 2021?
The global storage base reached 7.9 zettabytes in 2021, with predictions of it growing at 19% annually through 2025.
4. What is expected for unstructured data storage by 2026?
Gartner predicts large enterprises will triple their unstructured data storage capacity by 2026 compared to 2022, including file and object storage across on-premises, edge, and public cloud systems.
5. How can enterprises handle the challenges of massive data growth?
Enterprises should consider cost-optimized cloud object storage, which helps offload capacity to more cost-effective storage tiers while maintaining accessibility. This is known as an "active archive" strategy.