Heavy cloud forecast for the data centre

Cisco is projecting that cloud traffic that it will grow by more than 4 times (35 per cent CAGR), from 1.2 zettabytes of annual traffic in 2012 to 5.3 zettabytes by 2017. Meanwhile, overall global data centre traffic will grow threefold and reach a total of 7.7 zettabytes annually by 2017.

The interesting thing is that the cloud talking to itself, rather than users accessing it across access networks, is the big growth area.

Cisco says only 17 per cent of data centre traffic (less than one fifth!) will be fueled by end users accessing clouds for web surfing, video streaming, collaboration and connected devices.

"Other data centre traffic is not caused directly by end users, but by data centers and cloud-computing workloads used in activities that are virtually invisible to individuals," says Cisco in explanatory note.

For the period 2012–2017, Cisco forecasts that 7 per cent of data center traffic will be generated between data centers, primarily driven by data replication and software/system updates. An additional 76 per cent of data center traffic will stay within the data center and will be largely generated by storage, production and development data in a virtualized environment.

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