Video consumption will drive 85pc traffic from data centers to end users by 2021

BANGALORE, INDIA: Driven by surging cloud applications, data center traffic is growing fast. Both consumer and business applications are contributing to the growing dominance of cloud services over the Internet.

For consumers, streaming video, social networking, and Internet search are among the most popular cloud applications.

For business users, enterprise resource planning (ERP), collaboration, analytics, and other digital enterprise applications represent leading growth areas.

Compared to 88 percent in 2016, globally, cloud data center traffic will represent 95 percent of total data center traffic by 2021, according to the Cisco Global Cloud Index study forecast. The global cloud data center traffic to reach 19.5 zettabytes (ZB) per year by 2021, up from 6.0 ZB per year in 2016 (3.3-fold growth).

Applications contribute to rise of global data center traffic

By 2021, big data will account for 20 percent (2.5 ZB annual, 209 EB monthly) of traffic within data centers, compared to 12 percent (593 EB annual, 49 EB monthly) in 2016.

By 2021, video streaming will account for 10 percent of traffic within data centers, compared to 9 percent in 2016.

By 2021, video will account for 85 percent of traffic from data centers to end users, compared to 78 percent in 2016.

By 2021, search will account for 20 percent of traffic within data centers by 2021, compared to 28 percent in 2016.

By 2021, social networking will account for 22 percent of traffic within data centers, compared to 20 percent in 2016.