Cloud to Be Dominant Form of Data Center Traffic by 2021, Cisco Reports

The cloud, which already has had a dramatic impact on data traffic, will account for 95 percent of all data center traffic by 2021, according to a new report from Cisco. The Cisco Global Cloud Index (2016-2021) was released on Feb. 5, providing insight into cloud trends and data patterns. Cisco forecasts that global cloud data center traffic will grow from 6.0 zettabytes in 2016 to 18.9ZB per year by 2021. Cisco is also projecting that software-as-a-service (SaaS) will be the leading cloud service model through 2021, accounting for 75 percent of cloud workloads. In this slide show, eWEEK looks at some of the highlights from the Cisco Global Cloud Index (2016-2021) report.

Cisco is forecasting that by 2021, cloud data center traffic will account for 95 percent of total data center traffic, up from 88 percent in 2016.

Cloud data center traffic is set to grow from 6.0ZB in 2016 to 18.9ZB by 2021. During the same period, traditional data center traffic will also grow, from 849 exabytes in 2016 to 1.7ZB by 2021.

More than 70 percent of data center traffic (14.72ZB) remains inside data centers. End users only account for approximately 14.9 percent of data center traffic.

By 2021, Cisco forecasts that 73 percent of cloud workloads will make use of the public cloud, up from 58 percent in 2016. In contrast, private clouds will decline from 42 percent in 2016 to 27 percent of total cloud workloads in 2021.

Among the reasons why cloud data centers are growing are the increased efficiency and density of workloads. Cisco has a metric for workload and compute instance density that measures the average number of workloads and compute instances per physical server. Looking at cloud servers, the workload and compute instance density is set to grow from 8.8 in 2016 to 13.2 by 2021.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is the most widely installed workload in the cloud.

One of the key trends identified by Cisco is that software-defined networking (SDN) adoption will grow in data centers from 16 percent in 2016 to 67 percent in 2021.