Report Predicts Residential Internet Access By 2018

A NEW report from Cisco has revealed that by 2018 most part of the world will residential internet access while Middle East and Africa will have the second highest cloud workload growth rate by same year saying that more than half of those users will use personal cloud storage.

In the fourth annual Cisco Global Cloud Index (2013 – 2018), Cisco forecasts continued strong growth of cloud traffic, cloud workloads and cloud storage with private cloud significantly outpacing public cloud noting that in the next five years data center traffic will nearly triple, with cloud representing 76 percent of total data center traffic.

Cisco observed that African enterprises are steadily embracing cloud computing as the next big step in the advancement of the Internet adding that the  trend is definitely being witnessed in Africa as more and more individuals and companies are embracing could-based solutions.

Key highlights from the study for the region indicated that from 2013-2018, Middle East and Africa is expected to have the second highest cloud workload growth rate while  Asia Pacific (45 per cent CAGR); Middle East and Africa (39 per cent CAGR); and Latin America (34 per cent CAGR). In the Middle East and Africa, data center traffic will reach 366 exabytes per year (30 exabytes per month) by 2018, up from 68 exabytes per year (5.7 exabytes per month) in 2013, a CAGR of 40 per cent from 2013 to 2018.

On consumer cloud storage, by 2018, 53 per cent of all residential Internet users globally will use personal cloud storage and consumer cloud storage traffic per user will be 811 megabytes per month by 2018, compared to 186 megabytes per month in 2013.

For Global Data Center Traffic, the study predicts that global data center traffic will nearly triple from 2013 to 2018 with a combined annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23 per cent growing from 3.1 zettabytes/year in 2013 to 8.6 zettabytes/year in 2018. 8.6 zettabytes of data center traffic predicted for 2018 is equivalent to streaming all of the movies (approximately 500,000) and television shows (3 million) ever made in ultra-high definition (UHD) 250,000 times.

It also observed that global cloud traffic is growing faster than the overall global data center traffic. In 2013, cloud accounted for 54 per cent of total data center traffic and by 2018, cloud will account for 76 per cent of total data center traffic.

Head of Architectures Emerging Markets at Cisco, Den Sullivan, said, “As mobility is becoming more and more prolific across the continent, people are demanding to have access to personal, business and entertainment content wherever they go and on any device. This has increased the demand and use of cloud-based technology across Africa. The Cloud is definitely becoming a reality in Africa as businesses gain confidence in both the security and reliability of the Cloud.”