36% of content on cloud by 2016: Study

The desire to share content and access it on multiple devices will motivate consumers to start storing a third of their digital content using cloud computing by 2016, Gartner said on Monday.

In 2011, 7 per cent of consumer content was stored in cloud, but this will grow to 36 per cent in 2016, the research firm said.

Cloud computing enables companies to use software, applications and various services on pay-per-use basis, without the need to set up and own IT infrastructure.

With increased adoption of smartphones and tablet PCs, users are able to capture huge amount of photos and videos, which will require huge digital storage.

“Gartner predicts that worldwide consumer digital storage needs will grow from 329 exabytes in 2011 to 4.1 zettabytes in 2016,” the study said. This includes digital content stored in PCs, smartphones, tablets, hard-disk drives (HDDs), network attached storage (NAS) and cloud repositories.