The Importance of Improving Latency and Reliability in an Interconnected World
Disruption, pivot, chaos—no one was untouched by the pandemic. Organizations were forced to create new business models, new routes to market, experiment more, and build new products and services. These improvements helped save lives, accelerated our ability to react, supported our supply chains, and enabled us to stay connected. Those who were most successful navigating this change had a solid digital strategy underway. Those who didn’t found it hard to adapt.
The fourth industrial revolution and digital transformation has made the network as critical as power. This became clear during the pandemic and “work from anywhere” world we now live in. As the pandemic shifts to an endemic, the need for network and cloud computing is rapidly accelerating as we become a digital first world with companies’ digital spending now surpassing non-digital. Our lives and livelihoods are now dependent on the network more than ever.
Here are three technological impacts that have taken place in this new normal.
Networks became as critical as power with the pandemic pushing networks to new levels with working from home, online shopping, online conferencing and online schooling. As a result, IP bandwidth demand has been higher than ever with unprecedented increases. Businesses should expect to have more choice in providing site to site and wireline connectivity to ensure they have always-on network capabilities. Organizations should look to leverage partners who have developed a national network of facilities where small deployments of compute and connectivity can reside so that their network infrastructure is enabled for the future.
Edge computing got serious in 2022, with IDC predicting we will be managing 175 ZB of data by 2025, and that more than 30% of that data will require real-time processing at the edge. Early enterprise and public sector adopters or businesses looking for very specific deployment locations will appreciate robust connectivity and a mix of quality for mixed deployments—distributed services but more centralized databases, for example. The edge will be critical for managing data gravity and latency in the future.
Cloud computing demand reached all-time highs and the digital experience accelerates as customers and businesses found themselves needing more infrastructure. The need for companies to have someone else manage their compute became a critical aspect of the pandemic and accelerated the move to the cloud. Connectivity to the public cloud will be critical, and hybrid IT is the answer. As companies mature their cloud deployments, we can expect that some will continue to choose to right-size services into colocation or private cloud to control costs and improve security.
This new era demands low latency, high reliability networks to manage the explosive growth of data. Businesses should expect to have more choice in providing site to site and wireline connectivity to ensure they have always-on network capabilities. Organizations should look to leverage partners who have developed a national network of facilities where small deployments of compute and connectivity can reside so that their network infrastructure is enabled for the future.
Check out our FlexTalk with David Liggitt from Datacenter Hawk and Tom Myers, Regional VP at Flexential, where they discuss how to achieve superior network performance and interconnection.
Jason Carolan
Jason Carolan leads Flexential’s customer-driven innovation and advisory programs office, providing leading insights to product and technology evolution in a dynamic industry.