"A lot of our current innovation and research is around analytics of these big datasets and how you manage them, and how you get meaningful information from what has traditionally been too big to view or handle in traditional technology," he said.

The hosting company has seen various companies in the areas of health, geospatial imagery and digital media begin to build datasets that extend into multiple terabytes, often taking more than a day to analyse, split over several systems.

While current hardware is certainly capable, Gore said the awareness and commercial models used to handle such datasets were not yet being properly considered.

Some analysts have pinned continued data growth on but according to Ideas International storage analyst, Christian Ober, the rising feed of data from smart devices, such as new electricity meters, will likely contribute to a greater extent toward these huge datasets.

"It's about having a sea of sensors out there, having real-time data coming through to be analysed," he said.