Studies Forecast Boom in Cloud Traffic, Gear

Two recently released studies predict a continued boom in the already rapid ascension of cloud computing: Cisco Systems’ new Global Cloud Index forecasted a 12-fold growth in cloud computing traffic—to 1.6 zettabytes—by 2015. The same study predicts that cloud traffic will make up more than a third of data center workloads by 2014.

Meanwhile, Synergy Research Group’s quarterly Cloud Market Share Report reported that the cloud equipment market for the first half of 2011 exceeded $17 billion in sales with the private cloud segment in particular growing more than 30 percent annually. The firm projected that the overall cloud equipment sales market would reach $33 billion this year.

The Cisco Global Cloud Index is generated from a modeling and analysis of primary and secondary sources, including more than 30 terabytes of data generated each month over the past year from a variety of data centers worldwide, measurements of more than 45 million broadband-speed tests and third-party market forecasts.

The Cisco report further projects increasing acceptance of the cloud by enterprises: In 2010, the study reports, 21 percent of workloads were processed in cloud-based data centers and 79 percent were handled in traditional data centers. By 2014, Cisco predicts, the balance of will shift to the cloud for the first time, with 51 percent of total workloads housed in a cloud environment.

Synergy’s research shows that the public cloud still represents the biggest share of cloud equipment spending, at 56 percent in the first half of 2011. The report cites Cisco as the dominant networking infrastructure supplier for cloud deployments, with a market share approaching 50 percent. For virtualized computing systems, HP and IBM represent more than 50 percent market share combined, and Dell, NetApp and HP comprise 50 percent of the storage opportunity.

Top Cloud Vendors (First Half 2011 Cloud Equipment Sales)

            Market Share

1. HP               19.87 percent

2. IBM              17.98 percent

3. Dell             14.73 percent

4. Cisco           10.44 percent

5. Oracle          5.22 percent

Source: Synergy Research Group