Cisco estimates 12-fold growth in cloud computing traffic; unveils CloudVerse

Global cloud computing traffic will grow 12-fold from 130 exabytes to reach a total of 1.6 zettabytes annually by 2015, which means a 66% compound annual growth rate, according to Cisco’s Global Cloud Index report.

The news indicates that Cisco is increasing its efforts toward cloud computing, which is becoming a critical element for the future of information research and delivery of video and content. In announcing its its CloudVerse service, Cisco said that today most cloud technologies exist in silos, preventing an efficient, integrated management approach.

The study as well notes that due predominately to the rise in video-based consumer services, data-center-to-user traffic will have significant peaks in activity. Much like “prime time” television viewing, the average amount of data center traffic per hour while peak periods is expected to increase up to 2.5 times, requiring the need to plan for additional capacity from data centers and the cloud as so then as from the network.