Remember when all of your work data would fit on a single diskette? Or when you needed only a few floppy disks to back up your entire computer? Those times are long gone.

Always the innovator, Steve Jobs left the diskette behind as far back as 1998: The iMac G3 — an innovative, plastic, bright, egg-shaped, all-in-one personal computer that was Steve Jobs’ first-ever consumer product as CEO of Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) — didn’t contain a floppy disk drive. On non-Apple computers, built-in floppy disk drives all but disappeared on new computers by 2006.

The death — or near-death — of the floppy drive doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t create backup protection for our files or that we no longer have a need to share documents and information. Rather, the opposite. As technology developed and spread into most areas of our lives and work, floppies simply became too small to handle the amount of data we needed to store, back up and transfer. Consider the fact that a 1.44-megabyte floppy is barely big enough to fit some of today’s smaller-sized PDFs.

With our lives getting more and more digital, the amount of data we generate — both at home and at work — is growing dramatically, too. 

#-ad_banner-#According to EMC (an enterprise storage company), data we generate more than doubles every two years. In the seven-year period from 2013 to 2020, the digital universe will have grown by a factor of 10 — from 4.4 trillion gigabytes to 44 trillion. 

The Data Storage Business You Want To Be In
So, storage demand is growing. What about safety and security? 

EMC noted that, as of 2013, an estimated 40% of the information in the digital universe required some type of data protection, but less than 20% of the digital universe actually had these protections. Three years ago, data loss and downtime cost enterprises $1.7 trillion. It has been reported that these costs have since approached a level close to $2 trillion a year. 

No wonder we’re seeing news of digital breaches almost daily — and those are the cases that have been reported. Among computer-safety issues, the need to protect data while also being able to store it securely is the one that is bound to stay on the growth path for years to come. And there’s lots of room to run: the rate of that growth can be much higher than in most other sectors of technology services, fueled by the enormous data growth it has been lagging behind for years.

I see tremendous opportunity in this industry in the years to come. The worldwide disk-based data protection and recovery (DBDP) market is expected to grow to $16.6 billion by 2020. DBDP’s $8.4 billion worldwide data protection and recovery software (DP&R) segment is projected to grow especially fast. Cloud-based services, like one of my most recent Game-Changing Stocks portfolio additions, will grow at almost three times the rate of on-premise ones (annualized rates of 12.1% versus 4.3%, respectively). 

In other words, this pick is in the right business, and it’s even more profitable than its peers. Better still, the company is expected to grow its per-share profit at a 25% annual rate for the next few years, making now the perfect time to jump in. 

Introducing: THE LIST
While offering the name of this rising star wouldn’t be fair to my paying subscribers, I have something I think you’ll like even more. It’s a special report detailing the little-known companies we think are going to blow up next year, bringing unimaginable profits to early investors. 

This annual list, containing 7 bold predictions you won’t find anywhere else, is perhaps the most hotly-anticipated, controversial, thought-provoking thing we do here at StreetAuthority. 

It could also be the most profitable thing you read all year. 

By the time you hear about these ideas in the mainstream financial media, it’ll be too late. The big gains will have already been made. And while we don’t pretend to have a crystal ball, readers who have followed our predictions in the past have seen gains of 310%, 452%, 569% and more.

Most investors are lucky to notch a triple-digit gain every three or four years. But we think each and every one of the 7 predictions in this year’s report has triple-digit potential. Here’s a little taste of what I’m talking about:

Our #1 Pharma Pick holds the keys to a potential cure for sufferers of the most deadly food allergy on the planet. Millions of people suffer from it, and the effects can oftentimes be deadly. That means once this treatment makes it through the “Fast Track” approval process with the FDA — which could be any day now — shares could easily skyrocket 100% or more in short order.

Our #1 Biotech Pick has developed a weird little fiber that’s 35x stronger than steel. It’s also 4x tougher than Kevlar, which means that every bullet-proof vest could be made from this material. Strangely enough, it’s made by genetically altering the DNA of spiders. I’m not kidding. Frankly, we can’t believe this opportunity isn’t being talked about more in the mainstream media — but that’s good news for us, because it means there’s still time to get in on this pick in the early stages.

Our #1 Renewable Energy Pick is a little company we think could see their stock could climb as much as 10,000%. While everyone is paying attention to Elon Musk and what he’s doing over at Tesla, we’ve got our eyes on a company that is not only supplying Tesla with important components to revolutionize battery power — it’s also one of the U.S. military’s most important suppliers.

Our #1 Takeover Pick is a quick and easy way to play Warren Buffett’s next takeover move. We’ve spent months studying what Buffett looks for in his target companies, and we think we’ve found it… We project an easy 24.4% gain if we’re right…

Our #1 Marijuana Pick is a two-parter… We’ve found a direct play on the growing legalized pot sector (it’s a classic monopoly story) as well as a unique “Pick-and-Shovel” way to profit on the side. As Canada legalizes north of the border and more U.S. states enter the market, we think these are the two best ways to profit.

As I said earlier, we release these picks each year in a special report, which we simply refer to now as “THE LIST”. What I’ve detailed today is just a taste — the full version of our report has even more predictions, picks and research.

This year’s picks promise to be among our best ever. We’ll be diving into them in more detail in the coming weeks, but you can learn more about them right now. 

To see more of our research — and get your hands on the picks behind them, simply follow this link.