How data storage woes have spurred agile innovations

It’s estimated that in 2018-25, there’'' be a 530 per cent increase in global data volumes, a 175 zettabytes (one ZB equals a billion terabytes) up from 33ZB. At home, this data will probably be harvested through technologies like personal smartphones and smart home appliances.

While this growth presents an opportunity for better optimisation of activities, including online learning and academic referencing, however, it also ushers in storage challenges. For an e-commerce entrepreneur, it introduces a dilemma in the wake of a recent “Global Consumer State of Mind Report” : 77 per cent of consumers think data privacy is essential to them, 78 per cent are contemplating reducing their digital footprint and 63 per cent are thinking of stopping buying from brands that aren’t responsible with their personal data.

The situation is accentuated by the fact that the cost incurred by the young entrepreneurs in a bid to ensure responsibility with consumer data is increasingly greater than the benefit derived from it. The traditional forms of data storage are losing their power as hard drives are slow, unreliable and consume vast amounts of electricity. Besides, enterprise storage is duplicatory; it requires redundancy.

So, where will individuals store all this data?

Bacteria-feeding frenzy

In every household refrigerator, there is a bacteria-feeding frenzy. Escherichia coli is an ordinary laboratory strain of the ubiquitous human gut microbiome. Many people don’t know it beyond the fact that it causes food poisoning when ingested, due to contamination. But in recent years, a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers discovered something exceptional about it.

In a paper, “ Digital Universe of Opportunities: Rich Data and the Increasing Value of the Internet of Things”, published in 2014, they reportedly stored 700TB of data on a gramme of its DNA. That’s like data stored on a tower of 14,000 Blu-ray discs. That technology, they wrote, could store 44ZB, or 44 trillion gigabytes (GB), by early this year.

Beyond the business strategy aspect, encrypting and storing data in a ‘molecule of life’ may be a gateway to environmental sustainability. In recent decades, firms have mulled cutting their carbon footprint. But they overlooked their resource-hungry digital addiction and its effect on global emissions, maybe as “most of the data is in the cloud”.

Disrupt storage

The ability to store data on DNA will significantly disrupt the way information is stored and put companies on the path of innovative, sustainable data storage. Although some executives are sceptical about it, in a paper published in 2017, a group of professors in the United States created a microscopic environmental data recorder using the bacteria’s immune system. The bacteria could monitor otherwise invisible changes without disrupting their surroundings. The computational tools could then be used to read the recording and its timing.

The resulting environmental signals and recordings can be leveraged for policy actions. So, tackling global warming could simply start with a “molecular hack”, to enhance environmental sensing and basic studies in ecology and microbiology.