The internet is going to be this big 1,300,000,000,000,000,000,000

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“By 2016, annual global IP traffic is forecast to be 1.3 zettabytes

That according to the latest  Cisco® Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast (2011-2016).

What’s more, between 2015 & 2016, the increase of global traffic is more than 330 exabytes, almost equal to the total amount of global traffic in 2011 (369 exabytes). The report goes into greater detail as to the main reasons for this growth and they seem elementary:

  1. More devices
  2. More users
  3. Faster internet speeds
  4. More video
  5. More connectivity (Wi-fi)

So the internet is going to quadruple in the next 4 years because there are more people watching video on more gadgets, from more places, at higher speeds?  Makes sense to me….seems obvious.

We could apply the same thinking to storage.

The demand for storage is going to quadruple by 2016 because video is inherently higher capacity, more people with more devices getting online from more places and at higher speeds means there will be to be a heck of a lot more storage in the cloud…could we even say 4x as much?

Probably…

If we had 1200 Exabytes in 2010, with projections ranging from 7,000 Exabytes to 35,000 Exabytes by 2020 (I know that’s a big range…it depends on who you ask). At a bare minimum, storage capacity demand will increase almost 6x by 2020, so could we say 4x by 2016….maybe….pretty darn close.

I love these head scratching, eye-opening stats relative to the networking space that Cisco puts out, because growth like that has to be good for storage of all shapes and sizes….of course the bigger the better. By 2016, maybe we’ll arrive at HAMR (heat assisted magnetic recording).  Too bad the surge is happening before that technology is baked.  That just means more and more drives shipped between now and then.

Got any cool stats you want to share?

Related Posts:

A 60 Terabyte time crunch…the clock is ticking

Paving the way for big hard drive capacity gains

Why is the gap widening? Connected devices to storage devices.

 

2012-05-31T14:55:15+00:00

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