In a new report published last week, market analyst Gartner has projected that worldwide spending on data center hardware will reach $98.9 billion by the end of 2011. This uptrend is forecast to continue with $106.4 billion spent in 2012 and in excess of $126.2 billion in 2015. 

According to Jon Hardcastle, research director at Gartner, "Worldwide data center hardware spending will finally reach and surpass 2008 levels." And the main driver for growth will be in storage, which will account for "almost half of the growth in spending." Gartner considers the acquisition of servers, storage and enterprise data center networking equipment to be data center hardware spending.

Interestingly, just 2 percent of data centers contained 52 percent of total center floor space in 2010. By 2015, says Gartner, 2 percent of data centers will contain 60 percent of data center floor space, underscoring the growth of mammoth data centers. This is a reflection of how large data centers have benefited from the rise of cloud computing.

In addition, Hardcastle highlighted how the growth of traditional in-house enterprise data centers are stifled by the use of virtualization technologies and the more efficient system use of floor space. Moreover, the consolidation of third-party data centers also plays a part in helping to reduce the number of midsized data centers.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Channel Insider
- check out this article at eWeek
- check out this article at CIO Insight

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