Why Hybrid Cloud Now is Service Provider Focus

Despite the growth of public cloud operations, private cloud will represent 69 percent of cloud workloads in 2018, says Kelly Ahuja, Cisco SVP. That essentially explains service provider interest in hybrid cloud services.

"When people discuss cloud, they often focus on public cloud services or public cloud storage services,” Ahuja said. “Even with public cloud workloads having significant growth, by 2018, almost 70 percent of cloud workloads will still be private cloud-related.”

According to Gartner analysts, use of hybrid cloud will triple over the next three years. The percentage of organizations that prefer a hybrid approach will grow from seven percent to 20 percent in 2017, for example.

Put simply, there is a growing business for suppliers who are able to support hybrid cloud operations that bridge private and public cloud domains. No matter what the specific capacity or access provider involvement in cloud computing (simple transport, hosting, access, integration or cloud services of the software, infrastructure, platform, business process variety), hybrid operations are the largest potential segment, one might argue.

By 2018, 69 percent (113.5 million) of the cloud workloads will be in private cloud data centers, down from 78 percent (44.2 million) in 2013, and 31 percent (52 million) of the cloud workloads will be in public cloud data centers, up from 22 percent (12.7 million) in 2013, Cisco says.

Cloud operations also are growing as a percentage of total data center traffic. In 2013, cloud accounted for 54 percent of total data center traffic, and, by 2018, cloud will account for 76 percent of total data center traffic.

Through 2017, the average enterprise network will see a 28 percent compound annual growth rate(CAGR) for bandwidth due to the use of cloud computing, mobile devices and video, according to IDG.

By 2017, enterprises that do not control network use risk requiring up to 3 Mbps per user of

committed bandwidth, or more than 20 times the average need in 2012.

The bottom line is that capacity requirements, not to mention related integration and professional services, plus apps generated by hybrid cloud arguably arguably represent the single most accessible segment of cloud services revenue for most transport and data center providers.