Researchers estimate that 90 percent of the data in the world will be unstructured by 2015, the year when the digital universe is expected to hit the eight zettabytes mark. This projection reflects an unprecedented increase in data volumes: the Internet amounted to 2.7 zettabytes in 2012 and 1.4 zettabytes the year before.

With these figures in mind, it becomes apparent why 90 percent of CIOs plan to incorporate Big Data into their organizations’ processes and strategy. That’s the percentage Hewlett-Packard cited in an infographic it prepared for last week’s HP Discover conference in Las Vegas.

According to the company, Internet users post over 98,000 tweets per minute. More than 695,000 Facebook profile updates, 11 billion instant messages and 168 billion emails are sent in the same time frame, a mind-blowing number that adds up to a grand total of over 1.63 terabytes every 60 seconds.

Twitter may not be listed among the top three global data sources, but it did account for the bulk of the social sharing at HP Discover. The most popular hashtags were #coffeetalk, #TheCube, #BigData and #HPDiscover.

HP made sure that the IT professionals who attended Discover had plenty of news and announcements to share with their social media contacts. The company unleashed lots of new products, including an all-flash 3PAR box and a unified analytics platform called HAVEn. Patrick Stewart, a VP and GM at Avnet Technology Solutions, told us that the solution represents a radical change and an “awesome approach, especially for the channel.”

Stewart is very enthusiastic about the way HP is addressing Big Data. He said that the vendor is a “great company to work with” from a channel perspective, and praised management’s current strategy of unifying the HP analytics portfolio into a “specific solution for customers.”

To see the full Big Data infographic, click on the image below.