In 1998, Merrill Lynch cited a rule of thumb that somewhere around 80-90% of all potentially usable business information may originate in unstructured form.[1] This rule of thumb is not based on primary or any quantitative research, but nonetheless is accepted by some.[2] Other sources have reported similar or higher percentages of unstructured data.
As of 2012, IDC and EMC project that data will grow to 40 zettabytes by 2020, resulting in a 50-fold growth from the beginning of 2010. More recently, IDC and Seagate predict that the global datasphere will grow to 163 zettabytes by 2025 and majority of that will be unstructured.The Computer World magazine states that unstructured information might account for more than 70%–80% of all data in organizations.
1 ZB = 10007bytes = 1021bytes = 1000000000000000000000bytes = 1000exabytes = 1millionpetabytes = 1billionterabytes = 1trilliongigabytes.
our remaining freedom lies in that unstructurableness
