Gear Up for a Cloud Boom

Global cloud traffic will more than quadruple by the end of 2019, outpacing the growth of global data center traffic, which is forecast to triple over the same time period, according to Cisco's Global Cloud Index (2014-2019). What's driving the transition to cloud services? Just about everything—personal cloud demands, public cloud services and virtualization in private clouds. Cisco also believes increased machine-to-machine (M2M) connections have the potential to drive even greater cloud traffic. A big accelerator is the acceptance by both enterprises and government organizations to trust cloud environments for their mission-critical workloads, coupled with consumer demand for on-demand, anytime access. Together, these factors open up new opportunities for cloud operators and service providers to play a bigger role in the communications value chain. Cisco estimates the Internet of everything (the company's terminology for the Internet of things) connections will be valued at $1.7 trillion by 2022. Here are 10 reasons service providers should expand their cloud practices to get their piece of the market.