The Communications Market 2010 report from Ofcom has found that some 23 per cent of Internet users now access the web via a mobile device and 23 per cent of our time online is spent on social networks, increasingly via mobile devices.

We now spend nearly half our waking hours watching television or playing with the phone, the computer, or some other gadget. Shortening attention spans are reflected in Google Image Search emerging as a pre-eminent search engine in its own right. One other major fact stands out - online news audiences are much younger than print audiences.

Paul Phillips, Regional Director for UK and Ireland, Brocade Communications, stated: “From breakfast radio to peak time evening TV, via Internet surfing and texting at home, or emailing at our desks - the British are not only becoming increasingly good at multi tasking, but particularly adept at consuming and using the data we are increasingly confronted with in our ever-day, increasingly IT literate, mobile lives.”

“Thanks in part to the advent and increasing popularity of Smartphones, the everyday Briton is now confronted by an ever-advancing wave of digital information and data. If you take into account the fact that Apple has recorded over three million iPad sales in just 80 days it is clear that the previously fixed boundaries of networks are becoming ever more transparent.”

“The type of data is changing too - with live streaming, audio, real-time feeds and traffic through social media continually on the up. The increasing volume of both secure and unsecured data we are exposed to on a daily basis has led to increasing pressures on the very networks that provide the information.  In order to provide a continual and safe flow of data, networks have to be resilient, capable of handling all data, clustering and storage traffic,” continued Paul.

“Events are moving forward at an ever increasing rate, but two things are for sure; we need to be more flexible in our approach to networks, and more technologically aware of the options available to us but also of the security risks involved – if we plan for these changes and look after the robustness and security of our networks then the continually swelling waves of data we are exposed to will not see us stranded on the proverbial desert island,” he concluded.