In the second annual Cisco Global Cloud Index (2011-2016) issued this week, Cisco forecasts global data centre traffic to grow fourfold and reach a total of 6.6 zettabytes annually by 2016. The company also predicts global cloud traffic, the fastest-growing component of data centre traffic, to grow sixfold -- a 44% combined annual growth rate (CAGR) -- from 683 exabytes of annual traffic in 2011 to 4.3 zettabytes by 2016.
According to Cisco, 6.6 zettabytes is equivalent to:
* 92 trillion hours of streaming music --- Equivalent to about 1.5 years of continuous music streaming for the world's population in 2016.
* 16 trillion hours of business Web conferencing -- Equivalent to about 12 hours of daily Web conferencing for the world's workforce in 2016.
* 7 trillion hours of online high-definition (HD) video streaming -- Equivalent to about 2.5 hours of daily streamed HD video for the world's population in 2016.
“This year's forecast confirms that strong growth in data centre usage and cloud traffic are global trends, driven by our growing desire to access personal and business content anywhere, on any device,” said Doug Merritt, senior vice president of corporate marketing at Cisco
“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 centre virtualization and a new world of interconnected clouds."