Tech Expectations

A deeper look at disruptive business and personal technology

Monthly Archives: October 2014


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Your Enterprise Tech cheat sheet

As you speculate on who’s buying whom, who’s breaking up, who’s on the rise, and who’s in trouble, consider the Enterprise Technology stack. Hats off to Geoffrey Moore and the EMC M&A team who first taught me to think about the tech landscape in this way.

Technology markets are often controlled by “gorillas” or market leaders in particular parts of the stack. Consider the stranglehold Microsoft had for a long time in computer operating systems (dramatically reduced by Linux), or the continued dominance of Oracle in business databases (gradually being challenged by open source and the Cloud). Showing who has what in a stack orientation allows you to quickly scan gaps in a portfolio (that my need to be filled), alliances that may need to be formed, niche players that are being marginalized, etc.

This is a version 1 and would appreciate input. I had a tough time deciding whether to split Cloud vs. packaged/appliance into its own set of layers or not. I kept them as options within particular layers (e.g. database), but it may be more helpful to split them. In any case, here’s version 1. Let the speculation continue!


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99.8 percent of the world’s data was created in the last two years

I’ve recently come across the statistic that “90% of the world’s data has been produced in just the last two years.” However, I can’t find the real source for this statement, so I’ll try to quickly break it down below:

In 1997, Professor Michael Lesk, the Chair at the Department of Library and Information Science at Rutgers University, made the statement that all the world’s information amounted to about 12 Exabytes. This is from looking at “traditional” information in the form of cinema, images, broadcasting, sound, and telephony.

If we look at the last two years, the leading sources would be IDC with their Digital Universe study (sponsored by EMC), and the University of California, San Diego’s Global Information Industry Center. IDC is more of an apples to apples comparison, and they indicate that in 2012 and 2013, 2.8 and 4.4 zettabytes were created respectively.

If we directly compare 12 Exabytes with 7,200 Exabytes, 99.8 percent of all information was created in the last two years.

This bears additional investigation, but at least we’re now talking numbers. 😉