The past and the future of data and associated services

History demonstrates that human beings placed great importance on maintaining records. Perhaps, the concept of mathematics, starting with natural numbers, stemmed from the urge of counting livestock and recording them in some form. With the passage of time, the necessity of keeping records gave birth to data storage mediums, which later transformed to electronic devices. And now that we are in 2015, cloud storage does the trick! Naturally, the question arises that why have we banked so much on data and are always looking for better, compact methods of storing them in compressed, systematized, retrievable formats? The answer to this question is simple, but not obvious - data drives the economy in the 21st century. In today's world of digital dominance, people shares online content more than they share any kin's woes. Highly powerful websites, backed by massive data centers are engaged in recording, monitoring and analyzing even the minutest of our activities. Hovering the mouse pointer on a particular product at a shopping website, clicking a link to a certain webpage, expressing our emotions through 80 characters, sharing a video with peers - every imaginable online activity are tracked, stored, analyzed, personalized and monetized. Big Data, which deals with astronomical volumes of unstructured data dispersed over widespread geographical locations, is reshaping our future in an unprecedented manner. It provides real time insights into the complex world of human behavior and psyche, thus empowering companies to take quick and accurate data based decisions. No wonder, why companies across the world place a premium on data storage mechanisms and other information oriented IT assets. The surge in the significance of data utilization has given a shot in the arms of many industries, most of which are service oriented. To reduce the bulk of storage mediums and mitigate risks that are involved in storing invaluable data in vulnerable locations, many companies are targeting corporate clients as well as individual users to woo them for using cloud storage. It is child's play to create an account with a cloud service provider and store all your data in the cloud. However, for organizations with extremely high volumes of data stored in archaic and redundant storage mediums like magnetic tape drives and hard drives, migration from conventional means to the cloud can prove to be a nightmare, if expert and professional help is not sought. Let alone the technical complications, the very thought of losing data or the data getting tampered and corrupted during the transition phase, can send chills down the spine of CXOs. It is not that only organizations need to employ specialized service providers for migrating into the safe haven of cloud storage. Individuals can also hire them to create a safety net while treading the ropes that bridges the technologies of two different genres. Also, service providers focused on IT asset recovery can also create new value propositions and business models by harnessing the power of the internet of things. As smarter gadgets replace the older ones in the market and new inter-machine communication protocols are agreed upon, huge quantity of existing gadgets will be considered absolute and people will be a rush to embrace and surf the next big wave of technology. Without an iota of doubt, it can be a great opportunity to scale for IT asset recovery service providers.