Cisco Releases 2015-2020 Global Cloud Report
Enterprise Workloads Increase 2.4-fold - IoT Analytics Databases Account for a Large Share

Cisco has released the 'Cisco Global Cloud Index 2015-2020,' which analyzes the growth and trends of global data center and cloud traffic.

In this report, Cisco projected that global cloud traffic will increase 3.7-fold by 2020, rising from 3.9 zettabytes (ZB) per year in 2015 to 14.1 ZB per year in 2020. The company analyzed that migration to cloud architectures has increased because the cloud can support more workloads and scale rapidly compared to traditional data centers.

In addition, as operational efficiency increases due to the expansion of data center virtualization, cloud operators are expected to be able to flexibly provide various services to corporate and individual users with optimal performance.


▲ Global Cloud Traffic Growth: In 2020, cloud traffic grew 3.7-fold compared to 2015, accounting for 92% of total data center traffic.
(Annual compound growth rate 30% 2015–2020, Unit: zettabytes)

According to the report, corporate workloads are expected to increase 2.4-fold from 2015 into 2020. Of the enterprise workloads and consumer user workloads that make up the total data center workload, the share of enterprise workloads is expected to decrease slightly from 79% in 2015 to 72% in 2020, but enterprise workloads are still expected to account for a significant portion of the data center workload.

In enterprise workloads, IoT, analytics, and database workloads are projected to increase from 20% in 2015 to 22% in 2020, with collaboration and computing workloads accounting for a large share.

IoT, analytics, and database workloads among enterprise workloads have increased significantly.
Video and social media workloads account for a significant portion of personal user workloads.

Although individual user workloads are smaller in scale compared to enterprise workloads, their share of total data center workloads is expected to increase significantly from 21% (38.6 million) in 2015 to 28% (134.3 million) in 2020. In particular, video streaming workloads are projected to grow from 29% in 2015 to 34% in 2020, and social media workloads are expected to grow from 20% in 2015 to 24% in 2020, with these two sectors driving the growth of individual user workloads. Conversely, the share of search workloads is forecast to decrease from 17% in 2015 to 15% in 2020.

Cisco quantified the impact of hyperscale data centers for the first time this year [1] and released the analysis results. Global hyperscale data centers are expected to increase from 259 in 2015 to 485 in 2020, and traffic is expected to increase about fivefold over the next five years. Hyperscale infrastructure is expected to account for 47% of all data center servers and support 53% of data center traffic by 2020.

In addition, Cisco focused on infrastructure trends that will drive changes in data centers, including hyperscale. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) are expected to transform data center architectures and streamline traffic flow, with approximately 60% of hyperscale data centers worldwide projected to deploy SDN and NFV solutions by 2020. Furthermore, as data center operators continue to seek increased operational efficiency, traffic supported by SDN and NFV platforms within data centers is expected to rise from 23% in 2015 to 44% over the next five years.


▲ Global Data Center Traffic Growth 2015-2020, Data Center Traffic Grew More Than Threefold
(Annual compound growth rate 27% 2015–2020, Unit: zettabytes)

Cisco announced the rankings of the top 10 countries for fixed and mobile networks worldwide based on average download, upload, and latency speeds. For the top 10 countries, the average download speed for fixed networks is 66 Mbps, the average upload speed is 56 Mbps, and the average latency is 21 ms; for mobile networks, the average download speed is 29 Mbps, the average upload speed is 14 Mbps, and the average latency is 47 ms.

Significant increase in hyperscale data centers and traffic by 2020
Korea Leads in Fixed/Mobile Network Technology... Ready for Cloud

Korea ranked in the top 10 in both fixed and mobile network sectors. Korea's fixed network recorded an average download speed of 60 Mbps, an average upload speed of 53 Mbps, and an average latency of 21 ms. Additionally, mobile networks recorded an average download speed of 31 Mbps, an average upload speed of 14 Mbps, and an average latency of 68 ms.

"When Cisco began this survey six years ago, cloud computing was merely an nascent technology. However, it has now evolved into a core architectural element that provides scalability and flexibility to all telecommunications operators worldwide," said Jae-Beom Park, Vice President of the Telecommunications Business Unit at Cisco Korea. "Going forward, as telecommunications operators improve their infrastructure to provide proper IP-based services to enterprise and individual users, large-scale cloud migration and an increase in network traffic are expected to accelerate due to factors such as video, IoT, SDN, and NFV."