Interop 2012: Video will "quadruple IP traffic in two years"

Mobile usage will cause video to quadruple IP traffic by 2015, according to Cisco's CTO.

Padmasree Warrior said in a keynote speech to delegates at the Interop conference in Las Vegas that internet traffic is doubling in size every 5.32 years and with this increase comes more IP traffic, bandwidth and devices. There would also be more threats and attacks.

She said that IP traffic would quadruple within the next couple of years because of the amount of video being consumed by users with two-thirds of this traffic coming from mobile devices.

Warrior predicted that by the end of the year 70 per cent of enterprises would be using a form of cloud technology within their organisations. More companies would also be using virtualisation with 56 per cent of organisations wanting desktop virtualisation.

She also said there would be "big shifts" in the future due to social collaboration and big data. "right now, organizations need to think about bring your own device (BYOD), seamless access and having real time analytics."

Warrior said that while BYOD was an important trend, she added that for the modern enterprise, mobility is "about more than that" with the requirement that users have to bring applications from the office environment to "anytime and anywhere" environments.

She then talked about network programmability as an essential factor that enables modern enterprise networks.

She said Cisco's view was that there needed to be a set of protocols that are modular and can be tuned. These networks have to be manageable and automated to improve productivity.

"There is lots of discussion around Software Defined Networking and Cisco is investing in this area," said Warrior but warned that people needed to "think more broadly about it."

She concluded that networking was entering a "period of transition".

"It's an important time for the industry and we're about to re-invent the fundamentals," she said.