A report by networking world leader Cisco Systems has said that global cloud traffic will grow six-fold in the next four years, with Africa at the forefront of the increase.
The Cisco Global Cloud Index predicts that traffic will grow at a rate of 44 percent a year, accounting for nearly two-thirds of global data centre traffic.
The Middle East and Africa will see the highest cloud traffic growth rate, according to the report.
Cloud traffic is already the fastest growing traffic component, and Cisco now predicts it will increase from 683 exabytes to 4.3 zettabytes by 2016. It also forecast that global data centre traffic would grow four-fold annually to 6.6 zettabytes.
The report attributes this increase in traffic to data centres rather than end-users. The predicted 76 percent increase in data centre traffic by 2016 will result from storage, production and development data, with an additional 7 percent driven by traffic between data centres. Only 17 percent is expected to be fuelled by end users accessing the cloud for surfing the Web and video streaming.
Senior vice president for Corporate Marketing at Cisco Doug Merritt said the forecast confirmed the growth in data centre usage and use of cloud are now global trends.
“When you couple this growth with projected increases in connected devices and objects, the next-generation Internet will be an essential component to enabling much greater data center virtualization and a new world of interconnected clouds,” Merritt said.
