Yottabytes, Yikes!!!

For somebody who grew up in the communications revolution, I am used to the constantly changing terminology associated with technology. The ‘good old days’ when kilobytes were a dream and seen as ‘all you would ever need’, moved to the Megabytes and Gigabytes of today.

However more recently I have noticed resurgence in the use of the term ‘era’ when talk is of data usage predictions and possible new solutions to plan for in your network.

I remember people talking about the Terabyte era, but it seemed to fly by very quickly. The Petabyte era was even faster, as it seemed to be almost instantly usurped by the Exabyte era and even the Zettabyte era.

For those non techies amongst you, who I have probably already lost, each term is a 1000 times larger than the previous. You can do the math, it’s a lot!

So, is the Yottabyte era just around the corner? It will no doubt be the next ‘hot’ term to launch a new set of solutions.

What does this mean to us in the infrastructure world? Well, whatever the era we will need to supply the pathways for such amounts of data. And for someone who is looking forward to a long and prosperous career in the network infrastructure industry, I take great pleasure to think that we still have a long way to go.

So watch this space for the Yottabyte systems in the years to come. It sounds a bit like something out of a sequel to Star Wars, where the Jedi master has turned vampire. Now there’s a thought!

Anyway, let me leave you with a question, I could not find the term for the next layer above Yotta, so please, answers on a postcard, or Blog as they are known today?

Before anyone suggests it, I do not think Lottabytes is the answer!