Dive Brief:
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Cloud traffic will grow 3.7-fold by 2020, according to the 2016 Cisco Global Cloud Index. The report predicts cloud traffic will grow from 3.9 zettabytes (ZB) per year in 2015 to 14.1 ZB per year by 2020.
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The bulk of the growth will be attributed to business workloads, Cisco said. Of those, Internet of Things, analytics and database workloads will grow the most rapidly.
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Cisco says by 2020, the workloads from IoT, analytics and databases will account for 22% of total business workloads.
Dive Insight:
Cloud and IoT growth appears undeniable. Overall, Cisco said, 92% of workloads will be processed by cloud data centers by 2020. Only 8% will be processed by traditional data centers.
"Powered by video, IoT, SDN/NFV and more, we forecast this significant cloud migration and the increased amount of network traffic generated as a result to continue at a rapid rate as operators streamline infrastructures to help them more profitably deliver IP-based services to businesses and consumers alike," said Doug Webster, vice president of Service Provider Marketing at Cisco, in an announcement.
Globally, Cisco said data generated by IoT will reach 600 ZB per year by 2020. The technology giant is not the only one predicting a rapid expansion of IoT and the data it generates. Gartner recently predicted that 21 billion IoT devices will be used globally by 2020, outnumbering laptops, smartphone and tablets.
