India's digital universe is projected to grow 23-fold from 127 exabytes in 2012 to 2.9 zettabytes by 2020, driven by increased internet usage, smartphone adoption, and migration to digital TV. The share of global digital data generated by India will rise from 4% to 7%, while 61% of the data may need security, yet only 44% is currently protected. As the volume of data grows, the demand for information security and cloud computing solutions will increase significantly, necessitating collaboration between technology providers, businesses, and government.

1. I D C C O U N T R Y B R I E F
T H E D I G I T AL U N I V E R S E I N 2 0 2 0 : B i g D a t a ,
Bigger Digital Shadows, and Biggest Growth in
the Far East — India
February 2013
By John Gantz, David Reinsel, and Marshall Amaldas
Sponsored by EMC Corporation
Content for this paper is adapted from IDC's Digital Universe Study, December 2012, sponsored by
EMC. Additional content for the study can be viewed at http://www.emc.com/leadership/digital-
universe/iview/index.htm
India Profile
Digital Universe in India to Grow 23-Fold Between 2012 and 2020
The digital universe in India, or the digital bits captured or created each year in the country, is
expected to grow from 127 exabytes to 2.9 zettabytes between 2012 and 2020 (see Figure 1).
If all of the digital information created by India in 2012 had to be stored on Apple's latest iPhone 5
(32GB) smartphone, it would take more than 5,100 stacks of iPhone 5 devices as tall as the
subcontinent's famed Mount Everest. The total digital data created in the country will more than
double every two years, or grow by 50% every year. India's share of the global digital universe will
grow from 4% to 7% between 2012 and 2020. By 2020, its digital universe, if printed out as text,
would make a stack of books (equivalent to the 100,000-word paperback version of The Hunger
Games) reaching from Earth to Pluto and back 10 times. Asia's giants India and China together
account for 17% of the digital universe today; their contribution to the total digital universe is expected
to be as high as 29% by 2020.
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2. What's driving this growth?
 Continued growth of Internet usage, social networks, and smartphones among
consumers. Wide adoption of smartphones in lieu of traditional feature phones is one of the
biggest factors driving digital data creation. Indian ISPs are aggressively pushing free and bite-
size data plans (some under a dollar) on mobile devices in an effort to accelerate the mobile
Internet user base.
 Falling costs of technology. Devices that can create, capture, manage, protect, and store
information are also catapulting digital data creation. The availability of easily affordable Android-
based smartphones with price points as low as $65 has brought these devices to the masses.
Let's not forget that India is home to the world's cheapest ($20) tablet — Aakash.
 Migration from analog TV to digital TV. Broadcasting regulatory body Telecom Regulatory
Authority of India (TRAI) enforced a mandatory switchover from analog to digital transmission for
the major cities in India on October 31, 2012, and the switchover for the entire population of 1.3
billion is expected to be completed by 2015.
 Growth of machine-to-machine communication, including security images. Today, India's
contribution to the world's total machine-generated data is a little over 5%. As the country
progresses on its path toward modernization and automation in both the private sector and the
government sector, a much larger number of devices will be at work in Indian networks, which will
be communicating and generating larger and larger amounts of log/record data.
India has more than 140 million Internet users, according to Internet World Stats, up by a factor of
nearly 30 since 2005. This includes 65 million Facebook users; by 2015, India may have more
Facebook users than any other country, according to Socialbakers, a research firm in London. In
addition, in 2012, India had a Gen Y population (ages 15–29) of approximately 310 million, or 25.47%
of the total population, according to the Indian Population Bureau. Similar to Gen Y populations in
developed nations, large fractions of India's Gen Y demographic are Internet savvy and are heavy
users of social media and instant messaging communication channels. India's Gen Y population
alone is almost equal to the entire U.S. population in 2012.
Last year, India had nearly 1 billion mobile phones in use and around 750 million TV viewers. The
country has more cinemas and produces more movies than the United States. It has been a pioneer
in the digital distribution of films via satellite, with one firm alone (UFO Moviez India) supporting more
than 3,000 cinemas in 1,300 cities.
It’s also worth noting that India's digital universe is growing faster than available storage. This is a
function of an increasing amount of transient data — from phone call routing signals and digital TV
signals watched but not stored to signals coming from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN that are
discarded within microseconds. The issue with storage in the digital universe is less about how to
store all the bits than about how to store what must be stored intelligently, economically, and
securely.
The Consumer Influence
When we first started studying the digital universe, the origin of a majority of the bits within it came
from mature markets: In 2005, the United States and Western Europe accounted for 49% of the
digital universe. But as Moore's law has made digital technology — computers, smartphones,
cameras, TV, movies, industrial equipment — cheaper, the technology has become affordable for
more and more people around the world. Over time, the distribution of the bits within the digital
universe by country of origin will more closely mirror the distribution of the population. By 2020, the
United States and Western Europe will generate only 30% of the bits in the digital universe.
2 ©2013 IDC

3. However, in India, the contribution of individuals, as consumers or workers, creates a paradox.
Individuals accounted for only 42% of the regional digital universe in 2012 (lowest compared with
other regions), and enterprises created 58% (see Figure 2). Nevertheless, in India, enterprises had
responsibility or liability for 84%, compared with 77% in the United States. As a byte travels from one
consumer camera phone to another, at some point in its life, it passes through an enterprise-owned
network that must keep it secure and protect the privacy of the sender and the receiver. The same is
true for almost all bytes in the digital universe.
This responsibility for information security and privacy protection, part of that 84% mentioned
previously, for so much of the digital universe is one of the key challenges for the CIOs, data
scientists and architects, governments, and enterprises driving the development of the digital
universe.
IDC analysis of the information in India's portion of the digital universe by category of information
indicates that 61% of the data might need security at some level (see Figure 3). India has the highest
fraction of information that warrants protection compared with more developed countries/regions such
as the United States and Western Europe, where 25% and 46%, respectively, of total information
needs protection. However, only 44% of all data that needs protection in India is protected, which
makes data in India most vulnerable to security threats compared with data in other regions tracked
in IDC's Digital Universe Study. It is no coincidence that India also spends the least in terms of
managing data — $0.87 per GB compared with $1.31 per GB in China, $1.77 per GB in the United
States, and $2.49 per GB in Western Europe.
©2013 IDC 3

4. As the years pass, the challenge is clear: to increase information security and privacy protection fast
enough and competently enough to keep up with the 23-fold growth of India's digital universe.
Opportunity for Big Data
One of the ironies of the digital universe is that as soon as information is created or captured and
enters the digital cosmos, much of it is lost. If a lot of that information is not stored (refer back to
Figure 1), even more is not tracked or analyzed. Of course, not all of the information would be of
value if it were tracked, but certainly some of it would be.
IDC estimates that in 2012, 36% of the information in India's digital universe would be valuable were
it tagged and analyzed. We also estimate that less than half a percent is analyzed. We expect the
percentage of information in the region's digital universe that would be useful if tagged and analyzed
will be even a little bigger (37%) by 2020 (see Figure 4).
That's nearly a 25-fold growth of useful information, which should be an inspiration for the adoption of
Big Data technologies and practices.
4 ©2013 IDC

5. Impact of Cloud Computing
As India's digital universe grows more than 100% every two years — compared with single-digit
yearly growth in the number of IT professionals — the complexity of managing, securing, storing, and
extracting value from it increases considerably. Dealing with this complexity implies a new economy
of scale revolving around specialties — an incentive for cloud computing.
Although cloud computing is in its early days, it is already having an impact on the digital universe.
IDC estimates that in 2012, 22% of India's digital universe was in some way "touched" by the cloud —
stored, transmitted, or processed. By 2020, that percentage could be as high as 42% (see Figure 5).
©2013 IDC 5

6. Call to Action
India's digital universe in 2010 was bigger than that of the United States in 2005. Although it was less
than 4% of the total digital universe back then, it will be twice that size by 2020. It is growing 67%
faster than the U.S. digital universe. In 2020, India's share of the digital universe will be many times
more valuable than it is today — and many times more volatile. Many more bytes will need
information security, many more systems will need real-time responses, and many more demands for
reliability and speedy access will be made of the IT managers, CIOs, data scientists, and chief
security officers who manage the actual digital universe.
Technology will evolve — algorithms for automatically creating metadata for unstructured data; Big
Data software that enables analysis of large, diverse data sets; optimization software for real-time
systems; and, of course, information management, data deduplication, and cybersecurity tools.
However, the right technology tools will be necessary but not sufficient for the taming of India's digital
universe. It will take new management practices, user education, and savvy policies. This is where
technologists must rely on support from business units, government, and consumers, and it is likely
an area with bigger challenges than the technological realm.
No country, no region, no company can halt the expansion of the digital universe. One can only
prepare as best as possible.
6 ©2013 IDC

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©2013 IDC 7