We are not in the era of big data anymore. We are in the era of data so enormous it has no useful analogy.

This is the conclusion we reached while building a simple chart. We set out to illustrate the total amount of data created and captured globally across four eras of computing. To make the numbers feel accessible, we used a familiar analogy, the iPhone.

The top-of-the-line iPhone holds one terabyte. To store a single year of global data creation on iPhones, you would need 200 trillion of them, about 25,000 for every person on Earth. Apple has sold roughly 2.5 billion iPhones in its entire history. At that pace, it would take 80,000 years of production just to build enough devices to hold one year's worth of data.

The tech industry has been doing this kind of conjuring for years, searching for analogies to make the numbers feel real for the people charged with acting on them. But as we did the math and converted zettabytes to iPhones, we realized the data had grown so large that the analogies are not just ridiculous. They are distracting from a more pressing concern.

Handling data volume is no longer the main problem we're trying to solve. Extracting value is. And to do that, we need to solve for complexity.

Stadiums are perhaps the most complex data environments on earth, compressing an extraordinary range of data types into a single physical space, under one roof, in a four-hour window. Fan behavior. Broadcast video. AI inference. Payments. Access control. Building systems. Player tracking. Security. Concessions. Each one a separate stream. Each one carrying a decision that needs to be made, in some cases in milliseconds.

Many venue networks are optimized to handle volume better than complexity. There is meaningful work to be done to address this gap. In the coming years we expect to see more venues move toward IP-based, converged network architecture to reduce that complexity and unlock the value AI is making possible.

In the meantime, data will keep getting bigger. In fact, experts say we are heading for a day when the world's data will be measured in yottabytes, whatever those are.