Cisco Systems: 5 cloud predictions you should really know about

Global network giant Cisco Systems released its latest findings and forecasts on cloud computing between the years 2013 and 2018. From personal videos and photos to supporting business infrastructure, this technology is lowering costs all round, and it isn’t planning on rolling on its back any time soon.

Here are some interesting trends Cisco’s research found for the next few years:

1. Traffic will triple
Firstly, by 2018 data centre traffic will triple with cloud representing 76% of the total traffic.

Moreover, by 2018 half of the world’s population (a fat 7.6 billion) will have access to the web. Half of the world’s internet users will have their content on personal cloud storage services like DropBox, OneDrive and Google Drive.

Den Sullivan, Head of Cisco’s Architectures Emerging Markets, says notes that there’s a world-class demand for online services everywhere in the world.

“As mobility is becoming more and more prolific across the continent, people are demanding to have access to personal, business and entertainment content wherever they go and on any device,” he found.

“This has increased the demand and use of cloud-based technology across Africa,” Sullivan notes. “The Cloud is definitely becoming a reality in Africa as businesses gain confidence in both the security and reliability of the Cloud.”

2. The global adoption rate is booming
From 2013 to 2018, the world will experience an average growth rate of 23% per year.

The Middle East and Africa is expected to have the second highest cloud workload growth of 39%, with Asia Pacific leading the pack with a massive rate of 45%. Latin America, on the other hand, has a growth rate of 34%.

Cloud Traffic Growth by Region, in Exabytes:

Region	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	CAGR 2013–18
Asia Pacific	489	716	1,010	1,368	1,802	2,331	37%
Central and Eastern Europe	85	120	170	238	331	442	39%
Latin America	89	130	180	240	312	394	35%
Middle East and Africa	31	53	86	132	193	262	54%
North America	643	857	1,102	1,384	1,701	2,077	26%
Western Europe	311	401	502	631	791	988	26%

Source: Cisco Analysis, 2014

 

Now, to put these big numbers in perspective, one exabyte equals a million terabytes. One zettabyte equals one-hundred million terabytes.

In the Middle East and Africa, data center traffic will reach 366 exabytes per year (30 exabytes per month) by 2018, up from 68 exabytes per year (5.7 exabytes per month) in 2013, a CAGR of 40% from 2013 to 2018.

The 8.6 zettabytes of data center traffic predicted for 2018 is equivalent to streaming all of the movies (approximately 500,000) and television shows (3 million) ever made in ultra-high definition (UHD) 250,000 times.

3. Public cloud adoption is on the rise
Cisco also notes that public cloud use is growing faster than the private cloud. This, the research notes, is mainly due to business sensitivity to costs.

“Within the cloud segment private cloud will have significantly more workloads than the public cloud, however, public cloud will grow faster than the private cloud over the forecast period,” the report notes.

“Many enterprises will adopt a hybrid approach to cloud as they transition some workloads from internally managed private clouds to externally managed public clouds.”

4. The Internet of Everything is going to change, well, everything

Running with Cisco’s latest focus, the Internet of Everything (IoE) is generating large volumes of data, and currently only a small portion of that data reaches the data center.

The total volume of data generated by IoE in 2018 will be more than 400 zettabytes, or nearly 50 times higher than the sum total of data center traffic.

As some examples Cisco points to the following couple of likely catalysts in the industry:

● A Boeing 787 generates 40 terabytes (TB) per hour of flight, half a TB of which is ultimately transmitted to a data center for analysis and storage.
● A large retail store collects approximately 10 gigabytes (GB) of data per hour, and 1 GB of that is transmitted to a data center.
● An automated manufacturing facility generates approximately 1 TB of data per hour, and 5 GB of that is transmitted to a data center.
● A mining operation such as that of Rio Tinto can generate up to 2.4 TB per minute.

5. Cloud’s becoming very popular everywhere, fast
Referring to infrastructural development and costs, the number of countries deemed “cloud ready” continues to grow of course.

Last year, in 2013, 69 countries met the single advanced application criteria for fixed network, this year, in 2014; that number grew to 109 countries. Last year, in 2013, 42 countries met the intermediate single application readiness criteria for mobile networks, this year, in 2014, that number grew to 52 countries.