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== Introduction ==
The rapid growth of the [[Internet]] and [[World Wide Web]] has led to vast amounts of information available online. In addition, business and government organizations create large amounts of both structured and unstructured information which needs to be processed, analyzed, and linked. Vinton Cerf of [[Google]] has described this as an “Information Avalanche” and has stated “we must harness the Internet’s energy before the information it has unleashed buries us.” <ref>[http://research.google.com/pubs/author32412.html/ An Information Avalanche], by Vinton Cerf, IEEE Computer, Vol. 40, No. 1, 2007, pp. 104-105.</ref>. An [[IDC]] white paper sponsored by [[EMC]] estimated the amount of information currently stored in a digital form in 2007 at 281 exabytes and the overall compound growth rate at 57% with information in organizations growing at even a faster rate <ref>[http://www.emc.com/collateral/analyst-reports/expanding-digital-idc-white-paper.pdf The Expanding Digital Universe], by J.F. Gantz, D. Reinsel, C. Chute, W. Schlichting, J. McArthur, S. Minton, J. Xheneti, A. Toncheva, and A. Manfrediz, [[IDC]], White Paper, 2007.</ref>. In another study of the so-called information explosion it was estimated that 95% of all current information exists in unstructured form with increased data processing requirements compared to structured information <ref>[http://www2.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/ How Much Information? 2003], by P. Lyman, and H.R. Varian, University of California at Berkeley, Research Report, 2003.</ref>. The storing, managing, accessing, and processing of this vast amount of data represents a fundamental need and an immense challenge in order to satisfy needs to search, analyze, mine, and visualize this data as information <ref>[http://www.sdsc.edu/about/director/pubs/communications200812-DataDeluge.pdf
Got Data? A Guide to Data Preservation in the Information Age], by F. Berman, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 51, No. 12, 2008, pp. 50-56.</ref>. Data-intensive computing is intended to address this need.
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