Cloud provider sees 100% surge in demand for data

The impact of COVID-19 will certainly dampen overall spending on IT infrastructure as companies temporarily shut down and employees are laid off or furloughed. As per IDC, the server market forecast for 2020, sales of x86 servers will decrease 2.2 percent year over year to $81.9 billion, while non-x86 revenue is expected to drop 16 percent to $6.7 billion.

Many businesses are being forced to consider more cloud services to fulfill their compute and storage needs, which is putting unplanned pressure on the IT infrastructure in cloud service provider data centers and leading to growing demand for servers and system components. At the same time, the IT infrastructure markets are already going through a transformation and shifts in end-user spending will bring an even faster-changing IT buyer landscape

Microsoft has corrected its own claim that it had "seen a 775 per cent increase of our cloud services in regions that have enforced social distancing or shelter in place orders".It further says, we have seen a 775 per cent increase in Teams' calling and meeting monthly users in a one month period in Italy, where social distancing or shelter in place orders have been enforced." At the same time ,Bevan Slattery, the founder of Australian data centre operator NEXTDC, took to LinkedIn with a post that proclaimed: "Data centres are the new toilet paper."

Slattery said cloud providers are "seeing 5-100 per cent capacity spike already and are expecting 100-200 per cent requirements in the near term. Already major clouds are scrambling to grab every available MW [megawatt] of DC capacity available and locking up future builds". He then predicted: "Soon DC operators will need to start rationing MW just like toilet paper. Great time to be a cloud business and equally a great time to be a DC operator with (previously) spare capacity!"The world is going online all of a sudden at velocity.

The growing coronavirus crisis has been a big boost to the public clouds and their companion technologies.Public cloud and its enabling technologies are backstopping the massive shift to remote work and entertainment.At the same time, colocation data centers remain an attractive choice for many enterprises. But finding the right colocation data center with the right services and price remains a complex task. It is definately a good news for colos, which are growing very rapidly. In the coming days, many DC companies to come up with colo facilities.

Lockdown, social distancing, quarantine, and remote working are the buzzwords today that have collectively led to an increased pressure on the Cloud. While cloud providers are experiencing at least 20-40% surge in demand for data, cloud and co-location services. Linode, the world’s largest independent open cloud provider is experiencing a 100% increase in demand from existing customers and new customers. Basis this, Ashwin Kumar, Director, Data Centre and Cloud Operations, Linode India would like to share insights on how he sees this current trend picking up.

The visioon of many vendors to go cloud model is spiking up, at the same time the providers of Devops increases to 200% demand. Redhat, an IBM company allows complex cloud environments to be deployed with the click of button in accordance with the infrastructure-as-code mantra of the DevOps movement


While application vendors like Zoom Video, Skype, Slack,Team-Microsoft,Google cloud and Netflix are at the forefront of public consciousness these days, behind the scenes, Amazon Web Services-which supports all those web-scale companies-has been the essential player in enabling them to accommodate a world in crisis.

“During the first two weeks of lockdown, we saw demand spike almost 100%. That spike has settled to a roughly 75% rise in utilization. We suspect this increased demand will continue as companies look to alternative providers like us to better manage their cloud computing costs and strengthen their multi-cloud and business continuity implementations.”

“Today digital transformation and cloud planning are at the heart of all business strategies. Consequently, the demand for data center services that underpin these strategies is growing steeply. At Linode, we have seen demand for colocation services grow, especially among companies in the banking, e-commerce, and OTT sectors. SMEs, too are rethinking their business models and rapidly embracing the cloud to enable collaboration and remote working, minimize their IT expenses, and manage fluctuating demand.”

Emerging cloud solution vendor like Digital Ocean, have seen early indications of usage that will continue “rising considerably,” especially from its customers offering video streaming and gaming products.

“Current events have caused an acceleration in the adoption of more agile technologies, which will drive businesses to rapidly embrace digital transformation. This is especially critical for the SME sector, which is facing increased challenges to ensure both technological and financial continuity. And with businesses intensifying remote working and increasingly depending on digital communications for employee and customer interaction, the demand for resilient, accessible and affordable cloud infrastructure - not only in India, but around the globe - has never been more important.”