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The Growth of the Cloud and How This Affects the Growth of Data Centers

The growth of the cloud in recent years has been immense, to say the least.

A survey of CIOs in late 2013 by asset management firm Piper Jaffray found that annual growth in workloads for the public cloud versus on-premise computing workloads is expected to be 44% versus just 8.9%--a massive difference in the world of IT.

But that’s not all. Let’s have a look at some more numbers related to the growth of the cloud:

• Cisco estimates that between 2012 and 2017, global data center traffic is projected to triple.

• In that same time, data center traffic specifically in the cloud is forecast to grow nearly fivefold—from 1.2 ZB to 5.3 ZB.

• By 2017, Cisco also estimates that 69% of global data center traffic will come from cloud services and applications. That’s 5.3ZB in the cloud, and 2.4 ZB in traditional data center traffic.

• 7.7 ZB is equal to the amount of data generated if the entire world population were streaming 2.8 hours of HD video every single day of the year.

• Intel estimates that a new server needs to be deployed for every 120 tablets or 600 smartphones that hit the market.

Looking at these numbers, a few things are clear: 1), the amount of global data center traffic coming from the cloud is already large, and is expected to grow immensely in scope by 2017, and 2), that increase in global data center traffic equates to a clear need for more space and more data centers worldwide.

Here at Telx, we offer industry leading cloud and connectivity services, and our 21 data centers around the country are equipped to help your business scale throughout these rapidly changing times. Whether you need to scale down because business is slow, or scale up rapidly because your business is a part of the massive growth that global cloud traffic will experience through 2017, Telx can give you the reliable data center services that you need. 

If you’d like to learn more about what we’re doing here at Telx to accommodate the immense growth of the cloud over the coming years, connect with us via the contact page of our site, or by Facebook or Twitter. We’d love to answer any questions you may have.