Forbes.com says it best: “Cloud computing will soon make data centers even busier places than ever.”
In Forbes’ review of the Global Cloud Index just released by Cisco, it’s clear that the sky is not the limit with Cloud. It will accelerate at an unprecedented pace.
According to Cisco:
- Global data center traffic — cloud and non-cloud — will grow 4x from 2010 to 2015 and reach 4.8 zettabytes annually by 2015, growing at a rate of 402 exabytes per month by that time.
- The cloud computing segment of this will grow 12x over the same period, representing more than one-third of all data center traffic by 2015.
- Global cloud traffic will grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 66%, reaching 1.6 zettabytes by the end of 2015 – a rate of 133 exabytes per month.
- By 2014, the workloads processed in cloud data centers (51%) will surpass those processed in traditional data centers (49%) for the first time. A year later, cloud computing will constitute 57% of data center workloads.
Given the pressure this growth is going to put on the physical layer, one thing is clear. Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) couldn’t have come ay a better time for data center owners and operators. DCIM lets you manage the physical infrastructure that is driving all of this cloud traffic – the billions of dollars of IT and Facilities systems that let the Cloud do its thing.
Let’s face it. You can have the greatest Cloud strategy in the world, but without a highly-efficient, finely-tuned physical infrastructure to support it, you essentially have nothing. The logical depends on the physical – today more than ever before. Or the Cloud won’t fly.
