The 12-week study, performed by research firm TheInfoPro Inc. in Redwood City, Calif., asked 400 data storage professionals how much storage capacity they have, how the capacity is allocated and the capacity's effective utilization rate, or how much of its capacity is actually housing data.

In all, the world has seen the amount of data grow from 5 exabytes (5 billion gigabytes) in 2003 to 161 exabytes in 2006, according to another study by IDC that came out this month. The world's storage systems can no longer store all of the data being created. This year, the amount of information created and replicated (255 exabytes) will surpass, for the first time, the storage capacity available (246 exabytes), IDC said.

Over the next three years, the world's data will increase sixfold annually and bring the total content count to 988 exabytes by 2010, while there will only be about 600 exabytes of capacity on storage systems, according to IDC's study, which was sponsored by data storage vendor EMC Corp.

So how much data is that? The Library of Congress, with 130 million items on about 530 miles of bookshelves -- including 29 million books, 2.7 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4.8 million maps and 58 million manuscripts -- can be stored on 10 terabytes (10,000 gigabytes). So, the Library of Congress could be stored 161 million times over in the world's current data glut.

The data explosion means the role of IT managers will expand considerably as VOIP phones are joined to corporate networks, building automation and security moves to IP networks, surveillance goes digital, and RFID and sensor networks proliferate, IDC's study states.