According to Cisco Global Cloud Index, the global cloud traffic, the fastest-growing component of data center traffic, is expected to grow six-fold - a 44-per cent combined annual growth rate (CAGR) - from 683 exabytes of annual traffic in 2011 to 4.3 zettabytes by 2016.
The vast majority of the data center traffic is not caused by end-users but by data centers and cloud-computing workloads used in activities that are virtually invisible to individuals.
For the period 2011-2016, Cisco forecasts that roughly 76 per cent of data center traffic will stay within the data center and will be largely generated by storage, production and development data.
Doug Merritt, Senior Vice-President, Corporate Marketing, Cisco, said, “This year’s forecast confirms that strong growth in data center usage and cloud traffic are global trends, driven by our growing desire to access personal and business content anywhere, on any device.”
An additional 7 per cent of data center traffic will be generated between data centers, primarily driven by data replication and software/system updates. The remaining 17 per cent of data center traffic will be fuelled by end-users accessing clouds for Web surfing, emailing and video streaming.
From a regional perspective, the Cisco Global Cloud Index predicts that through 2016, the Middle East and Africa will have the highest cloud traffic growth rate, while the Asia-Pacific region will process the most cloud workloads, followed by North America.
