Enterprises are beginning to get their heads into the clouds, and the next three years will see significant growth. Enterprises and third party operators are transforming to cloud data centres and fast becoming the indispensable infrastructure for computing, storage and management of Big Data. Enterprises require simple and scalable ways to create interoperability between data and endpoints, and among multiple data silos. They need infrastructures which offer highly available, multi-tenant and elastic integration cloud to support both high density computing and day-to-day business operations.

An international survey of IT decision makers conducted for international data centre operator Equinix surveyed companies in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, the UK, US and Singapore. The results indicated that over 90% intend to deploy cloud-based services over the next 12 months. 79% of respondents said they plan to use multiple clouds, 77% within the next 12 months. 58% of respondents said they planned to use clouds operating in more than one country.

In November 2014, Cisco released its latest GCI report showing that by 2018, 75% of data centre workloads will be processed in the cloud and global data centre traffic will have nearly tripled.

Highlights from Cisco’s Cloud Index – GCI report for 2013 – 2018

Global data centre traffic will grow nearly three-fold
By 2018, global data centre traffic will reach 8.6 zettabytes per year
By 2018, 76 percent of all data centre traffic will come from the cloud
By 2018, three out of four data centre workloads will be processed in the cloud

Source: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/service-provider/global-cloud-index-gci/index.html

As Figure 8 [below] from Cisco’s Cloud Index report indicates, workload density in private-cloud data centres will continue to grow faster than workloads in public cloud data centres – but the gap is narrowing.

broadgroup figure8
Figure 8: Public Cloud Virtualisation Gaining Momentum

Source: Cisco Global Cloud Index, 2013–2018

Cloud activity is happening on a global scale.  For example:

IBM is expanding its global cloud computing network to 40 cloud centres with 12 new locations including an IBM Cloud centre in Frankfurt.  In 2014, IBM opened a SoftLayer Cloud Centre in Paris, France which complements its SoftLayer cloud centres in London and Amsterdam. IBM also has a strategic partnership with third party data centre operator Equinix to provide direct access to the full portfolio of SoftLayer cloud services via the Equinix Cloud Exchange. This partnership allows IBM to access nine markets worldwide spanning the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific. Since the start of November, IBM has announced more than US$4 billion worth of cloud agreements with major enterprises around the world.

Cisco Systems is investing US$1 billion over two years to expand its cloud offerings, linking hundreds of data centres and cloud providers around the world. In second half of 2014, Cisco added over 30 Intercloud Partners including Deutsche Telekom, BT, NTT Data and Equinix, thereby expanding Intercloud’s reach to 250 data centres in 50 countries.

These and other cloud developments are hugely impacting wholesale and retail co-location data centres operators: 

Cloud accounted for 65% of new leases in 2014 for wholesale operator Digital Realty Trust – data presented at BroadGroup’s Finance & Investment Forum, London in January 2015. 

Tier 1 co-location operators, such as Equinix, Interxion and TelecityGroup, are developing their data centres as cloud connectivity hubs. 

New entrant operators are building their businesses on the growth cloud customers. For example; Virtus in London reported that new customers in Q4 2014 included five cloud providers.

The key driver for all this activity is not hard to see: it’s all about data. Particularly mobile data applications, whether they are for consumers or enterprise users.  Enterprise mobility and BYOD are among the trends for 2015. Data growth is tripling, generated through media, video, M2M and the Internet of Things. The need for new technology is driving change, zettabyte architectures, new designs, and next generation data centres. More businesses are looking to outsource non-core services via the cloud, making cost savings in the value chain yet benefitting from cloud innovation, especially in regards to Big Data.

These are all important themes which feature in BroadGroup’s Datacloud 2015 conference 3rd & 4th June in Monaco – an event which creates the largest European platform for data centre and cloud IT infrastructure end users and business leaders to discuss these dynamic changes in our industry.

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