CALIFORNIA, USA: The average numbers of medium, large, and super size data centres owned by operators providers that offer data centre and cloud services is growing over the next two years, with large and super sized data centres growing the most, finds market research firm Infonetics Research.

In its latest 'Data Center Deployment Strategies: Global Service Provider Survey', the research firm notes that Virtualization and network convergence allows these operators to grow sustainably to meet the demand for cloud services.

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"Service providers are once again in expansion mode, however, unlike in the late 1990s when the bandwidth rush was on, the focus this go-around is a quest for revenue. Service providers seeking to bolster their financial picture and gain a piece of the cloud service revenue pie are leaveraging a captive customer base and expanding data centre offerings to include virtualization technologies and even new networking facilities like fibre channel over Ethernet," explains Sam Barnett, directing analyst, data centre and cloud, Infonetics Research.

The top two data centre application strategies planned by respondents are 1) running applications on a fully virtualized infrastructure, and 2) replicating applications and data across data centres based on demand, such as is common with airline reservations systems.

The #1 data centre interconnection strategy planned by service provider respondents is using multiple physically separate connections for physical protection, adds the report.

Use of legacy data centre interconnection (DCI) technologies, leased dark fiber, and SONET/SDH is slowing over the next two years, while wavelength, IP/MPLS, and Ethernet transport are increasing.