By 2018, the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region will have the second highest cloud workload growth rate in the world, with a CAGR of 39%, and will see data centre traffic reach 366 exabytes per year compared to 68 exabytes per year in 2013.
This is according to the fourth Cisco Global Cloud Index (2013-2018) which was released this week and forecasts continued strong growth of cloud traffic, cloud workloads and cloud storage with private cloud significantly outpacing public cloud.
Over the next five years, the study projects data centre traffic to nearly triple, with cloud representing 76% of total data centre traffic. By 2018, half of the world’s population – estimated by the UN to reach 7,6-billion people by then – will have residential Internet access and more than half of those users’ (53%) content will be supported by personal cloud storage services.
“As mobility is becoming more and more prolific across the continent, people are demanding to have access to personal, business and entertainment content wherever they go and on any device. This has increased the demand and use of cloud-based technology across Africa,” says Den Sullivan, head of Architectures Emerging Markets at Cisco.
“The cloud is definitely becoming a reality in Africa as businesses gain confidence in both the security and reliability of the cloud.”
Some of the key findings from the research include:
Global data centre traffic
The study predicts that global data centre traffic will nearly triple from 2013 to 2018 with a combined annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23% growing from 3,1 zettabytes/year in 2013 to 8,6 zettabytes/year in 2018.
The 8,6 zettabytes of data centre traffic predicted for 2018 is equivalent to streaming all of the movies (approximately 500 000) and television shows (3-million) ever made in ultra-high definition (UHD) 250 000 times.
Global cloud traffic is growing faster than the overall global data centre traffic. In 2013, cloud accounted for 54% of total data centre traffic and by 2018, cloud will account for 76% of total data centre traffic.
Consumer cloud storage
By 2018, 53% of all residential Internet users globally will use personal cloud storage and consumer cloud storage traffic per user will be 811 megabytes per month by 2018, compared to 186 megabytes per month in 2013.
Private versus public cloud adoption and growth
By 2018, 31% (52-million) of the cloud workloads will be in public cloud data centres, up from 22% (12,7-million) in 2013 and 69% (113,5-million) of the cloud workloads will be in private cloud data centres, down from 78% (44,2-million) in 2013.
Global cloud readiness
The number of countries deemed “cloud ready” continues to grow. Last year, in 2013, 69 countries met the single advanced application criteria for fixed network, this year, in 2014; that number grew to 109 countries. Last year, in 2013, 42 countries met the intermediate single application readiness criteria for mobile networks, this year, in 2014, that number grew to 52 countries.
