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Cisco predicts a 'growing reliance' on cloud data centers
Tue, 6th Dec 2016
FYI, this story is more than a year old

The growing importance of data analytics has added to the value and growth of data centers.

Cisco noted this particular line in a recent blog post, stating that the impact of data center growth can be experience through the ever increasing digital footprints driven by online behaviors.

“Consider the “network effect” that occurs when we do an Internet search, watch a movie online, make online purchases or connect with friends over social networks,” writes Shruti Jain, senior analyst, SP Thought Leadership with Cisco.

“In our professional lives, many of us are also adopting new cloud-based business processes and applications. In the coming years, increasing amounts of end user traffic will be touching a data center.

Jain highlights that in 2015, 86% of the total end user/device traffic (per the Cisco VNI Forecast) touched a data center and this traffic share is expected to reach 94% by 2020.

“In our latest Global Cloud Index (GCI) Forecast 2015-2020, we estimate a near doubling of large hyperscale data centers in the public cloud space,” explains Jain.

“The number of hyperscale data centers will grow from 259 in 2015 to 485 by 2020. This is a clear indication of not only the data centers growth in general but a growing reliance on the cloud data centers with faster delivery of services and data, increased application performance, and improved operational efficiencies.

In Cisco's latest Global Cloud Index (GCI) Forecast 2015-2020, the organisation estimates large hyperscale data centers in the public cloud space will close to double.

“A hyperscale data center is operated by one of the twenty-four operators, having billions of dollars in annual revenue across the categories of infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), or infrastructure hosting services, software as a service (SaaS), Internet, search, and social networking and eCommerce/payment processing,” writes Jain.

“The number of hyperscale data centers will grow from 259 in 2015 to 485 by 2020. This is a clear indication of not only the data centers growth in general but a growing reliance on the cloud data centers with faster delivery of services and data, increased application performance, and improved operational efficiencies.

Cisco states that data centers themselves will undergo a big transformation with the evolution and deployment of new software-based architectures, cloud applications, more robust, faster, secure and intelligent networks.