IoT growth demands rethink of long-term storage strategies, says IDC

SINGAPORE, July 28 - 2020 – Internet of Things (IoT) is finding its way across various industries and applications, and the data generated from these devices is creating new opportunities to improve business outcomes. Managing this data is key to delivering organizational insights. Furthermore, choosing the appropriate storage solution for long- and short-term storage of this data is vital. IDC Asia/Pacific's latest report titled Business Models for the Long-Term Storage of Internet of Things Use Case Data details how generated data expanded across a multitude of IoT devices – deployed across various industry verticals – and how their respective use cases can be managed and archived.

“While IoT is becoming an acceptable term across various application areas, managing and archiving of the data generated from the connected devices is a critical success factor for the industries. Based on that the criticality of data to the application/use-case, redundancy, and granularity of information generated from the connected devices, decision towards level of compression and timelines for storage are decided and implementing the security and governance policies around the storage,” says Abhishek Mukherjee, Senior Market Analyst for Telecommunications and IoT at IDC Asia/Pacific.

IDC predicts that by 2025 there will be 55.9B connected devices worldwide, 75% of which will be connected to an IoT platform. IDC estimates data generated from connected IoT devices to be 79.4 ZB by 2025, growing from 13.6 ZB in 2019. Most of this data arises from security and video surveillance, but Industrial IoT applications will also take a significant portion of this data.

Based on the assets across different use cases of IoT, IDC has designed a model which considers the level of redundancy and need for short-term or long-term storage. It is projected that Permanent storage requirements for 4K video data will reach 26,680 exabytes across connected assets in Asia/Pacific* by 2025, growing at a 5-year compound annual growth rate of 23.2%.

Other key highlights of the report:

• Application area, asset type, use-cases, and level/ frequency of access and redundancy in the data are key consideration areas for selecting the appropriate storage solution for long-term and short-term storage of data.
• While technical aspects translate to the adequate storage requirements, the report also emphasizes upon how Governance, Risk and Compliance policies are implemented in these storage solutions for long term storage of the data.

IDC has been tracking the development of leading regional and global telecommunications service providers in the market through its core research on 5G, CAPEX market forecasts, IoT Access and Traffic, IoT Spending, Managed SD-Wan, Telecom Services, as well as business sentiment surveys around carrier transformation, next-generation software-defined networks and collaboration.

IDC's Asia/Pacific Internet of Things Ecosystem and Trends service examines the rapidly evolving Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem and industry, including the evolution from machine-to-machine (M2M) to IoT solutions in Asia/Pacific. In addition, IDC reviews the impact IoT has on various industry verticals, including manufacturing and healthcare, and the new business models that will emerge — the key topic areas that are growing in importance in Asia, including Smart Cities and consumer wearables. The Asia/Pacific Internet of Things Ecosystem and Trends targets vendors across the IoT ecosystem, including device/module manufacturers, service providers, application developers, security vendors, analytics vendors, and systems integrators. To learn more, contact Hugh Ujhazy at hujhazy@idc.com or click HERE

Business models for long term storage of IoT use case data is one of the reports under IDC Asia Pacific's Asia/Pacific Internet of Things Ecosystem and Trends series. Other upcoming reports are as follows: AI and IoT: Analytics/AI at the edge and related opportunities, Cost savings are associated with IoT platform deployments, Role of partner ecosystem in executing IoT strategy across organizations – implications and challenges, Agile and distributed computing for IoT apps.

*Note: Asia/Pacific excluding Japan