Consumer cloud storage to soar

Consumers will store a third of their digital content in the cloud by 2016, driven mostly by smartphones and tablets, CBR reports.

New research by Gartner suggests that, currently, around 7% of consumer content is stored in the cloud; this is expected to rise to 36% by 2016.

According to Cloud Pro, the analyst firm expects that digital storage needs across the world will increase by 91%, from 329 exabytes in 2011, to 4.1 zettabytes in 2016 (1 exabyte = 1 073 741 824 gigabytes; 1 zettabyte = 1 024 exabytes).

The average household will require at least 3.3TB of online storage data in the next four years. This is up from 464GB in 2011.

"Cloud storage will grow with the emergence of the personal cloud, which in turn will simplify the direct-to-cloud model," IT Pro quotes Shalini Verma, principal research analyst at Gartner, as saying.

"Online storage and sync companies need to have a strategic rethink about their future approach."