In the next five years, there will be as much data created as was created in the entire history of planet Earth, and the technology industry will need to be ahead of the curve, the leader of tech behemoth Hewlett-Packard Co. told Utahns on Friday.

Mark Hurd, HP's chief executive officer, was the keynote speaker at the 7th annual Utah Information Technology Association Hall of Fame gala at the Downtown Marriott in Salt Lake City. The event honored new inductees Drew Major, a founder of Novell and the lead architect and developer of Novell's NetWare operating system, and Homer R. Warner, a pioneer in medical informatics.

Given the unprecedented amount of data that will be produced, collected and stored in coming years — at home, in government and business — Hurd said one of the technology industry's great challenges will be what to do with it all.

"In the next five years, there will be as much data created as in the history of the planet Earth," Hurd said. "One billion gigabytes are produced and stored every year, the equivalent of all the words ever spoken by human beings. Each one of us leaves an ever-growing digital footprint every single day of our lives."

The footprint grows every time people send an e-mail, take a digital photo or download a song. In business, technology is infused in supply chain management, financial and employee information. In government and health care, technology is everywhere and becoming more integral every day.

"The question is," Hurd said, "what do we do with it all? How do we make all that data meaningful? How do we organize it, manage it, use it? How do we make the connections between information and the people who need it to make the appropriate decisions at the appropriate time?"

HP's goal, Hurd said, is "to lower the cost of computing, while delivering the absolute highest levels of security, and reliability and manageability.

"HP is working to become a simpler, more nimble, more focused company," he said, focusing on six growth areas: imaging, management software and data center automation, storage management, mobility, security, service automation tools and technology.

"The world of the mainframe is really done," he said. "You're going to see an environment where you see decentralized computing, but that decentralized computing with lower-cost standards has to be tied together with integrating software capability. I think you'll see tremendous innovation and speed of innovation around that area in the next five, six, seven years."

The competition will continue to be fierce, domestically and abroad. But, despite all the talk of the rise of India and China on global economic stage, Hurd said, it would be a mistake for companies to rely on outsourcing as a way to grow and compete.