Cisco has recently predicted that global cloud traffic, the fastest growing component of data centre traffic, will grow 4.5-fold—a 35 per cent combined annual growth rate (CAGR)—from 1.2 zettabytes of annual traffic in 2012 to 5.3 zettabytes by 2017. Overall global data centre traffic will grow threefold and reach a total of 7.7 zettabytes annually by 2017. A zettabyte is one billion terabytes.

Nearly 17 per cent of data centre traffic will be fuelled by end users accessing clouds for web surfing, video streaming, collaboration and connected devices, all of which contribute to the Internet of Everything, which is the networked connection of people, data, process and things.

Other data centre traffic is not caused directly by end users, but by data centres and cloud-computing workloads used in activities that are virtually invisible to individuals. For the period 2012-2017, Cisco forecasts that seven per cent of data centre traffic will be generated between data centres, primarily driven by data replication and software/system updates. An additional 76 per cent of data centre traffic will stay within the data centre and will be largely generated by storage, production and development data in a virtualized environment.

"People all over the world continue to demand the ability to access personal, business and entertainment content anywhere on any device, and each transaction in a virtualized, cloud environment can cause cascading effects on the network," said Doug Merritt, SVP, product and solutions marketing, Cisco. "Because of this continuing trend, we are seeing huge increases in the amount of cloud traffic within, between and beyond data centres over the next four years."

From a regional perspective, the Cisco Global Cloud Index predicts that through 2017, the Middle East and Africa will have the highest cloud traffic growth rate (57 per cent CAGR), followed by Asia Pacific (43 per cent CAGR) and Central and Eastern Europe (36 per cent CAGR).

According to Cisco, the global data centre traffic will triple from 2.6 zettabytes in 2012 to 7.7 zettabytes annually in 2017, representing a 25 per cent CAGR. Also, the transition to cloud services is driving global cloud traffic at a growth rate greater than global data centre traffic. Global data centre traffic will grow threefold (a 25 per cent CAGR) from 2012-2017, while global cloud traffic will grow 4.5-fold (a 35 per cent CAGR) over the same period. Additionally, cloud traffic will grow from 46 per cent of total data centre traffic (98 exabytes per month or 1.2 zettabytes annually) of total data centre traffic in 2012 to 69 per cent of total data centre traffic (443 exabytes per month or 5.3 zettabytes annually) of total data centre traffic by 2017.

In Asia Pacific, data centre traffic will grow 3.6-fold by 2017, at a CAGR of 29 per cent from 2012-2017, data centre traffic will reach 2.7 zettabytes per year (228 exabytes per month) in 2017, up from 772 exabytes per year (64 exabytes per month) in 2012. In addition, Cisco predicted that Asia Pacific cloud data centre traffic will grow 5.9-fold by 2017, at a CAGR of 43 per cent from 2012-2017 faster than overall data centre traffic. Cloud data centre traffic will represent 68 per cent of total data centre traffic by 2017, compared to 41 per cent in 2012. Consumer will represent 79 per cent of cloud data centre traffic by 2017, compared to 74 per cent in 2012. Asia Pacific leads in the number of subscribers throughout the forecast period due to the region's large population.

By: DocMemory
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