Ever wondered what goes into managing all the pictures that we upload on Facebook or Orkut? Where do all the pokes, smiles and hugs wait till accepted? How do banks and retail outlets, which regularly SMS and email customers on latest bargains, tailor their offerings for specific customer segments and communicate with them?

With the explosion in the number of connected devices, the task of managing all the data which is being generated will only grow tougher. This is where information infrastructure comes into play. With more and more people becoming a part of the digital universe, companies are increasingly finding it difficult to store, manage and channel all the data in an effective way. This has spurred IT bigwigs to look at this space more aggressively.

Consider this: IBM has recently announced an investment of $2 billion in the information infrastructure spanning over three years to launch solutions and technologies, which will help companies deal with their data flow effectively in a cloud computing environment. Moreover, the launch of 30 new and upgraded information infrastructure technologies and services also marked IBM?s largest information infrastructure launch ever.

?With this, we see IBM being able to help its customers around the world make the best use of this technology and solutions and bring down their operating expenses and have a better IT infrastructure,? says Shailesh Agarwal, vice-president (business systems), systems and technology group, IBM India and South Asia. The company has also made a string of acquisitions in the past one year to beef up its offerings in this space.

Equally gung-ho are firms like HP, Sun Microsystems, NetApps, Computer Associates and EMC. They are striving to come out with relevant solutions for today?s fast changing technology environment. ?Information infrastructure is nothing new but a set of tools which ensure faster, easier and secure access to data,? says Akhilesh Tuteja, head of IT advisory, KPMG.

He goes to explain that these products and services are relevant largely for information intensive sectors, where there is a lot of data to manage. ?Organisations are now growing rapidly and are not able to live with the traditional point solutions. Sectors like e-commerce, telecom and banking generate large amount of data and they require intelligent solutions for faster retrieval, security and access,? he says.

According to IDC estimates, data created by 2010 will be to the tune of 1,773 exabytes, ten times of what it was in 2006. With the proliferation of the mobile Web, the average individual?s information footprint (the digitisation of entertainment, healthcare, security, social networking and retail preferences) will grow from one terabyte (about 50,000 trees cut and printed) per year to more than 16 terabytes by 2020, according to IBM.

Moreover, it is estimated that by 2010, nearly 70% of the digital universe will be created by individuals. However, businesses, agencies, governments and associations will be responsible for security, privacy, reliability and compliance of at least 85% of that digital universe.

Also, over two billion people are expected to be on the Web by 2011 and there will be one trillion connected objects?cars, appliances, cameras, roadways, pipelines?comprising ?the Internet of things?.

Businesses, however, are not prepared for this new phase of cloud computing, which gives consumers access to data and systems remotely. ?The focus is on building bridges between mediums. There is a need for collecting, analysing and conversion of data to put it in the right perspective,? says Gaurav Gupta, principal and country head, Everest Group.

The advent of Web 2.0 has also created an environment for two-way commu-nication, which means that a lot of user generated content has to be kept track of, managed and continuously updated. Content-rich Web 2.0 applications such as video and photo sharing services combined with the growth of user-generated content on the Web is creating billions of new objects in the form of documents, videos, digital images and music. These market requirements have led to the rise of cloud optimised storage, a term used to describe current and future global-scale information management architectures.

?There was a time when users could only consume the content on the Web, now, they are also creating content for consumption. Therefore, a lot of capacity is needed, which is where applications that manage it are needed. Also, all data is not similar and so prioritisation is needed on the policy front,? says Deepak Kumar, GM, communications research, IDC India.

According to market estimates, the information infrastructure market in India will touch $1.1 billion by 2011. The sectors which are expected to drive consumption of information infrastructure applications are telecom, banking, finance and insurance, media and government. Organised retail too is expected to be a big market segment as it expands. ?There is a need for billing, inventory, store level data management, etc in retail. While all this data may be generated at a Wal-Mart, it may be of much use for the Coca-Colas and the P&Gs of the world,? says Gupta of Everest.

He goes to add that in case of telecom companies, customers are one of the most valuable assets and the way they analyse that data gives them a differentiated proposition. ?So, such solutions help companies scale up operations and extract more out of what they have,? he says.

Government sector too, with its huge records, which are largely non-digitised, is big area for investment as everything static media has to be converted into rich media. It already contributes around 18% to information infrastructure revenues. ?Programmes like e-governance, e-citizen etc especially will see a lot of scope for information infrastructure,? says Lokesh Jindal, senior vice-president and general manager, CA, India.

However, in times like these, when global IT spending is expected to decline, Alok Ohrie, president EMC India, says that the spending will not stop though it will be more need based. ?In this scenario, the demand for such products and solutions will be pretty strong as companies will need to maintain and sustain their business in an effective manner,? he says.

Moreover, storage is one aspect of information technology that, despite the economic slowdown and slashed IT budgets, will continue to attract investment, according to the recent IDC survey, which trims down the global IT spending growth to 2.6% from the earlier 5.9% forecasted. ?Clearly, speed to market, better return on investment, reduced energy and power costs and reduced complexity to ensure less manpower involvement will define technology product superiority. Clients who can virtualise and consolidate their IT infrastructure will be the leaders in terms of keeping a check on their IT investments as well as overall operating expenses,? concludes Agarwal of IBM.