Cisco data center forecast very cloudy

The growth represents a 66% compound annual rate, from 130 exabytes to 1.6 zettabytes, which is the equivalent of 22 trillion hours of streaming music, or 5 trillion hours of business Web conferencing with a webcam, or 1.6 trillion hours of online high-definition video streaming. Cloud is the fastest growing component of data center traffic, which itself will grow fourfold at a 33% compounded annual rate to reach 4.8 zettabytes annually by 2015, according to Cisco.

The rise in video-based consumer services

But due to the rise in video-based consumer services, data-center-to-user traffic will have some significant peaks in activity. The average amount of data center traffic per hour while peak periods is expected to rise up to 2.5 times, requiring the need to plan for additional capacity from data centers and the cloud as then as from the network, Cisco says, adding that the on-demand model of cloud is optimized for this type of variable demand.

All regions included in the study - Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America and North America - are currently ready for basic cloud-computing applications, just as social networking and Web conferencing, based on factors just as broadband ubiquity, average upload and download speeds, and average latency.

For cloud-computing applications just as video chat and high-definition video streaming, Asia Pacific, Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, and North America are considered to have average network capabilities strong enough to support these services. No region, nevertheless, was assessed to be able to support "advanced" cloud applications just as high-definition video conferencing and advanced gaming. Nevertheless certain countries within each region -- just as South Korea and Japan -- are currently able to do so, Cisco says.