What moving to the cloud means for data storage

Smart technologies have become central to our day-to-day operations. Cloud-based applications have been growing at full speed, and are a part of daily life: personal, business, Internet of Things (IoT) and living in a smart city. Within the next two years, approximately 95% of data centre traffic will come from the cloud, or rather the data servers that host the cloud.

Cloud-based tech offers better connectivity and analytical capabilities, which creates an exponential demand for scalable data centres. In recent years, the global demand for cloud-based data has significantly increased and it has no intention of slowing down. By 2021, global data centre traffic is expected to reach 19.5 zettabytes (roughly equating to one billion terabytes), which is a huge increase from 6 zettabytes in 2016. 

With South-East Asia’s emerging digital economy, the region, along with a majority of the world, is moving towards an “always-on” state; powered by the internet. In 2019, South-East Asian organisations spent $375.8 billion on digital transformation. Data centres will be crucial in maintaining these cloud-based infrastructure and developments.

Europe’s data centre market is much larger and more established, as it has had more time to mature compared to Asia. Businesses in Europe are shutting down their on-site data rooms and are moving to co-located data centres. By 2025, it’s estimated that 80% of enterprises will store their data in third-party centres.As online traffic and data is expected to increase exponentially, the future of data centre storage will need to be cost-effective, accessible and secure. On-site data storage requires enormous amounts of power. One-third of servers in on-site data rooms serve no function other than system redundancy and data back-ups; draining energy and depleting resources with little return. Meanwhile, data centres offer an economy of scale. By moving to using data centres, enterprises could see a major reduction in energy costs without compromising their data reliability, flexibility and security. 

When it comes to any online process, it is completely normal for businesses to have concerns about cybersecurity and how their data will be handled. Data centres are now highly secure facilitators of the digital economy, modernised data governance and storage protocols maximise data centre security. 

Data centres are also more reliable, cost-effective, and secure than on-site storage. That’s why more than 30% of tech providers have moved to being cloud-only this year. By 2022, it is estimated that the cloud service market will have grown by another 12.6% to a mammoth $331.2 billion. 

The future is in the cloud, and data centres will be integral to all of our storage needs.