Dive Brief:

• The Internet of Things and database and analytics are set to be the fastest growing applications in enterprise workloads and compute instances through 2021, according to Cisco's Global Cloud Index. The enterprise segment is expected to account for almost three-quarters of all data center workloads and compute instances in this same period, with the remaining quarter falling to the consumer segment.
• Cloud workloads and compute instances are undergoing changes over the next few years, with SaaS and PaaS delivery models rising as IaaS models fall. By 2021, workloads and instances will be divided 75% SaaS, 16% IaaS and 9% PaaS, according to the report.
• Workloads in the public cloud are set to increase from 58% in 2016 to 73% in 2021. In the same period, workloads in private cloud data centers are expected to decrease from 42% to 27%, according to the report.

Dive Insight:

While most businesses may have put services and workloads in the cloud, it does not mean that all organizations have used it effectively.

But the growth in cloud workloads is an indicator that more businesses and organizations are taking mission-critical workloads and business segments and moving them to the cloud, according to the report.

The amount of traffic inside data centers is also increasing as companies learn to use data in more strategic and profitable ways. Over the next three years Big Data is undergoing an eight-fold increase and set to comprise almost one-third of all data in data centers.

For the cloud providers, the growth in cloud workloads is a business boon. All the major providers reported strong quarterly earnings earlier this month, and Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform are especially well poised to cut into AWS' lead in the market.