The numbers are barely comprehensible. The amount of digital information "created, captured, and replicated" last year was equal to 161 billion Gbytes, according to a recent IDC report, roughly equivalent to the contents of 12 stacks of books extending from the Earth to the sun. In 2010, IDC estimates, the info flow will reach 988 billion Gbytes.

OK, numbers are easy to exaggerate in the computer industry. And infoglut isn't a new problem. But the proportions today--from sources as disparate as blogs, wikis, instant messages, e-mail, spreadsheets, RFID tags, video, e-commerce transactions, help desks, supply chains--are intimidating. This year, for the first time, the amount of digital information generated will surpass the storage capacity available, IDC estimates. "When it reaches a level that it's become a palpable threat," says IDC analyst Susan Feldman, "then it's time to do something about it."

The threat is that the glut will overwhelm an organization's ability to manage information, much less make use of it. Business technology managers are well aware of the problem. Web portals, data warehouses, and data analysis tools were at the top of those managers' 2007 project lists, according to

InformationWeek Research's Outlook 2007 survey, far outranking investments in business applications. Among business initiatives, establishing processes that support real-time business information was a key goal, outranked only by optimizing business processes.

Collectively known as information management, the task of dealing with disparate data sources involves several overlapping technology areas: database and content management systems; networked storage systems; servers that manage master data and unstructured content; servers that profile, cleanse, and integrate data; the warehouses that contain that improved data; the business intelligence tools that make sense of it; and the search engines that find it.

In the coming years, the most successful businesses will be those that figure out how to extract real knowledge from the information flowing through their systems and proliferating out on the Web and use it as a competitive advantage.

HORSE TO WATER

Motorola uses a system it calls Compass to manage content that's been doubling in size every 12 to 14 months, says Brad Bosley, senior manager of enterprise content and collaboration platform. What that amounts to right now is 37 terabytes of information, including the content in 4,400 blogs, 18 million documents, and thousands of extranet sites used by customers and partners. Motorola regularly archives older data, but there's always more coming in: Last month there was 2.6 terabytes of the stuff, Bosley says.

Compass is based on Open Text's Livelink enterprise content management system, and it evolved from a system for managing Microsoft Office documents. It's been in place for 10 years and can be accessed by more than 70,000 Motorola employees. The biggest challenge with Compass isn't technical, Bosley says. It's getting employees to use it.