A new study suggests that the Middle East and Africa will have the second highest cloud workload growth rate by 2018. This will be driven by the proliferation of cloud computing across the regions and its increasing adoption by Africans.

According to the report, data center traffic will nearly triple over the next 5 years with the cloud making up for 76 percent of overall data traffic. This projected increase is justified by examining just how mobility is becoming prolific across the continent; as more people acquire the means to access content wherever they go, and from multiple devices, this trend is sure to stay.

In specifics, the study suggests that the Asia Pacific region will see a growth of 45% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) over the 2013-2018 period with the Middle East & Africa coming in second at 39% while Latin America follows closely with 34% CAGR. In terms of traffic, the Middle East & Africa data center traffic is expected to reach 366 exabytes (an exabyte equals 1 billion gigabyte) per year by 2018, a clear upward shift from 68 exabytes per year as of 2013. This represents a 40% GAGR from 2013-2018.

The United Nations estimates that the total world population by 2018 will be 7.6 billion. A good majority will possess residential internet facilities and a projected 53% of these will use cloud storage for personal and professional uses.

“The growth in population and internet usage has increased the demand and use of cloud-based technology across Africa. The Cloud is definitely becoming a reality in Africa as businesses gain confidence in both the security and reliability of the Cloud,” commented Den Sullivan, Head of Architecture, Cisco Emerging Markets, at the launch.

Also, Global Data Center Traffic is expected to rise significantly, experiencing a CAGR of 23% and growing from 3.1 zettabytes (one zettabyte equals 1 trillion gigabyte) per year in 2013 to a projected 8.6 zettabytes per year in 2018. To put this figure in context, 8.6 zettabytes of data is equivalent to streaming all 500,000 movies and 3 million movies ever made in ultra-high definition about 250,000 times.

Lastly the number of countries the report classifies as being “cloud ready” has increased steadily. This year, about 109 countries have met the single advanced application criteria for fixed network, up from 69 countries last year. Also, the number of countries that met the intermediate single application readiness criteria for mobile networks grew from 42 last year to 52 this year.

As more individuals and enterprises in Africa are motivated to embrace the cloud, it is evident that this technology will be one of the fundamental game-changers of the 21st century.

By Emmanuel Iruobe

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