In October, Cisco released its Global Cloud Index (GCI) report for 2014-2019, projecting a near 3-fold growth of global data center traffic, with predictions that this traffic will reach 8.6 zettabytes (cloud data center traffic) and 10.4 zettabytes (total data center traffic) per year in 2019 and 80% of it will come from the Cloud. It’s predicted that the Middle East and Africa will show the highest Cloud traffic growth at 41% CAGR, followed closely by Eastern Europe (38% CAGR), and North America (33% CAGR). Cloud computing has already revolutionized the way we live and do business, but it’s evident the evolution has just begun.
Cisco predicts that the development of IoT will notably increase cloud traffic growth as a broad range of IoT applications generate data that may reach 507.5 zettabytes per year in 2019. Today, the majority of IoT data is stored on individual devices, but that could change with the evolution of big data analytics and application demand.
Cisco’s GCI also projects that Software as a Service (SaaS) will be the most adopted and popular service model for cloud workloads by 2019, increasing 14% between 2014 and 2019, but Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) workloads and Platform as a Service (PaaS) workloads of the total cloud workloads will drop.
Cloud is encouraging the uptake of Gaming with its broad reach as well as the power to provide high speed and optimum hardware requirements to anyone. And with new applications developing for almost every industry, including healthcare, insurance, and education, the Cloud is literally gamifying our lives.
While the Cloud is likely to make maintenance and repair easier as Cloud-based apps alert users of failures and connect to the net for self-repair procedures, we are also likely to find ourselves inundated with notifications, reports, advice, and warnings. Add to this, marketers will be taking every opportunity to tailor shopping experiences and develop relationships, so advice and suggestions aren’t likely to be in short supply.
Of course, as the Cloud turns mobile devices into supercomputers, we’ll have access to more information to make smarter decisions, having the power to analyze almost any information wherever we are. Moreover, the possibilities for IoT devices that make us more intelligent are endless.
As small- and medium-sized businesses leverage the Cloud, geographical and budget constraints will fade with the benefits of scalability. Businesses won’t need to deploy on-site infrastructure to run operations and will, in days, be able to go global and keep up with much larger companies.
With the flourishing home health monitoring market, public and private Cloud will make our homes healthier. As the Cloud provides doctors with wireless patient monitoring, valuable data can be analyzed for the creation of better treatment plans.
Cloud computing is already providing mobile-device users with accurate speech recognition that may fade language barriers almost as well as Douglas Adams’ Babel Fish. We might not have long to wait for a software able to recognize and then translate audio over a mobile device, providing users with real-time translation services for all their calls.
Not matter the industry or region, Cloud is changing our lives in dramatic and exciting ways. Do you have any ideas or hopes for the next big Cloud innovation? Let us know in the comments below.
By Jennifer Klostermann
