Rapidly Falling Storage Costs Mean Bigger Databases, New Applications

Anyone who's bought a computer lately knows that the price of storage has been falling rapidly. And as disk drives get cheaper, databases are getting bigger, which is enabling companies to do things they couldn't do a few years ago, according to Richard Winter, president of Waltham, Mass.-based Winter Corp., a consulting shop that specializes in very large database installations.

Winter, who periodically surveys his customers about the size of their databases, estimates that the largest commercial databases in use today are in the range of 50 terabytes.

Most databases in the commercial arena are in the 100 gigabyte to one terabyte range. Winter estimates that there are currently a couple hundred commercial databases over 10 terabytes, and only a handful in the 50 terabyte range.

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