The use of cloud storage has grown significantly over the last several years. Traditional data centers are storing less data while the cloud is storing more. Early adopters are aware of the benefits of the cloud and others have followed in similar fashion. In this article we will discuss the statistics that support the increasing growth of cloud usage.
Cisco releases its Global Cloud Index (GCI) each year, and released their 2014 report this past week. The GCI is described as:
“..(a) report (that) forecasts data center and cloud traffic as well as key trends for 2013-2018. Highlights include:
- Global and regional data center and cloud traffic growth projections
- Global and regional workload transitions (virtualization) from traditional IT to cloud solutions
The GCI report assesses regional and country-level cloud-readiness using broadband performance as a precursor for cloud service adoption by network consumers and business users.”
In other words, it predicts the growth of cloud adoption over the next several years. This year’s report shows some significantly interesting projections. It suggests:
- Cloud adoption and usage will triple by 2018
- Global data center traffic will reach a level of 8.6 zettabytes by 2018
- In or before 2018 three quarters of ALL data will be stored in the cloud
- Three quarters of data center workloads will be processed in the cloud
These projections show a significant jump in cloud usage over the next four years. Currently the cloud accounts for about 50% of data center traffic, almost an even split from traditional data center computing and storage.
One of the more intriguing projections in the report is how cloud usage will grow regionally. Cisco expects the Middle East and Africa to have the highest growth rate, at 54% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Central and Eastern Europe are expected to have around a 40% CAGR and Asia about 37%.
Private vs. Public cloud adoption was also discussed, and showed some surprising suggestions. The Cisco release stated, “By 2018, 69% (113.5 million) of the cloud workloads will be in private cloud data centers, down from 78% (44.2 million) in 2013, and 31% (52 million) of the cloud workloads will be in public cloud data centers, up from 22% (12.7 million) in 2013.”
This shows that private cloud will be trending downward while the popularity of the public cloud will increase. Public cloud is becoming increasingly popular due to its lower costs with similar storage levels.
Finally, consumers are expected to increase their cloud storage usage by nearly 5x what they do now. The report expects that over 50% of Internet users will have personal cloud storage and that the average user will store about 800MB, compared to a little under 200MB in present times.
These trends obviously bode well for companies providing cloud storage presently and those that will in the future. The increase in usage will benefit everyone as users store more in the cloud and providers find better ways to manage and store their customer’s data.
You can read the full report as well as use Cisco’s GCI Highlight Tools to gain tons of insight into their cloud projections for the next several years.