Briefs

The amount of data the average business collects and stores is doubling each year. If that holds true at a company such as Sears Roebuck & Co., which is combining its customer and inventory data warehouses to create a 70-terabyte system, the retailer will hit the 1 petabyte threshold--1,000 terabytes--within four years. The Stanford Linear Accelerator database and the CERN prototype particle accelerator database are also on track to hit or surpass the 1 petabyte threshold in the next several years.

The boom in data management is attributable to falling storage prices thanks to improved disk-drive technology and companies getting information from a plethora of resources, all to facilitate better customer service and smoother business operations.

See http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20020208S0009