Technology & IT | Sunday 7 October, 2018 4:53 pm |

Digital transformation is accelerating for every company in every industry, everywhere around the world. As a part of this necessary transition, people, software and machines are creating and consuming data faster and in more distributed locations than ever before, creating dissonance and driving businesses to private and direct Interconnection to solve their complex integration challenges.

According to the second annual Global Interconnection Index (the “GXI”), a market study published by Equinix that analyzes traffic exchange globally, Interconnection, or direct and private traffic exchange between key business partners, is becoming the defacto method for companies to operate in today’s digital world.Interconnection Bandwidth provisioned for this purpose is forecasted to grow by 2021 to 8,200+ Terabits per second (Tbps) of capacity, or the equivalent of 33 Zettabytes (ZB) of data exchange per year, a dramatic increase over the previous year’s projection and ten times the projected capacity of internet traffic1. This represents a significant five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 48%, almost double the expected 26% CAGR of global IP Traffic.

 

“Significant macro, technology and regulatory trends are converging to form an unprecedented era of complexity and risk and forcing the integration of physical and digital worlds,” said Sara Baack, Chief Marketing Officer for Equinix, Inc. “The second volume of the Global Interconnection Index has found that companies are solving their increasing digital requirements by directly connecting to key business partners through Interconnection, as traditional forms of connectivity do not meet the demanding requirements of today’s businesses.”

 

Jeroen Schlosser, Managing Director, Equinix MENA said: “The trend of digital transformation is revolutionizing the MENA market, urging businesses to take innovative approaches such as cloud adoption. One of the ways businesses can use the cloud more securely is through direct, dedicated interconnections between network and cloud providers and users and data, bypassing the hacking and performance risks of the public internet. At Equinix, we see multi-cloud convergence hitting a tipping point and the cloud as a major catalyst for changing how enterprises will do business in the emerging global digital economy.”

As the global report shows, interconnection is key to ensure full digital transformation and for this, businesses will need to grow their interconnection bandwidth capacity (data exchange capacity). “Every MENA business must understand and leverage Interconnection Bandwidth to compete in the digital age. This will require a regional drive among IT chiefs to re-architect their companies’ IT platforms.”

According to a separate independent study, commissioned by Equinix where UAE IT decision-makers were surveyed, over 75 % of respondents reported it is very important and key deciding factor to have Cloud service providers in close proximity when choosing a data center. Commenting on the statistic, Jeroen added: “ Our Dubai data center acts as a regional hub, offering close proximity to multiple Cloud Service providers interconnecting a critical mass of industry participants in one place, allowing businesses to enhance performance and increase user satisfaction while reducing operational costs.”

 

Some of the key macroeconomic, technology and regulatory trends that have driven Interconnection growth in the past year and will impact its future growth include:

• Digital Business Transformation, which drives the need to support real-time interactions between people, things, locations, clouds and data to enable value capture. At least 50% of global GDP will be digitized by 2021, with growth in every industry driven by digitally enhanced offerings, operations and relationships2.
• Cybersecurity Risk, which expands Interconnection consumption as firms increasingly shift to private data traffic exchange to bypass the public internet and mitigate against digital threats as data is distributed across a growing number of vulnerability points. Large-scale cybersecurity breaches are one of the most serious risks facing the world today, and the scale of the threat is expanding drastically. By 2021, the global cost of cybersecurity breaches is projected to reach US$6 trillion3.
• Business Ecosystems, which are experiencing an increase in mix of customers, partners and employees and require digital ecosystems and Interconnection to scale. By 2021, organizations using a mix of intermediaries are projected to more than double, and active engagement with industries outside the organization’s native industry are projected to nearly triple4.

According to the separate independent study commissioned by Equinix, in the UAE more than half (68%) of the IT decision-makers that were surveyed reported that interconnection will be more important to their organization in the next three years while 87% of respondents agreed that interconnection is a key facilitator to digital transformation.

To capture digital value, companies will need to support real-time interactions by more strategically interconnecting the workflows across people, things, locations, cloud and data. The second volume of the GXI identifies four classes of Interconnection use cases5 along with an IT maturity model. Adopted in combination, these use cases create a digital-ready infrastructure for today’s businesses:

• Network Optimization to shorten the distance between users and services applications.
• Hybrid Multicloud to connect and segment traffic between multiple clouds and private infrastructure.
• Distributed Security to deploy and interconnect security controls at points of digital engagement.
• Distributed Data to deploy and interonnect data analytics in proximity to users.

 

Silkwon Lee, President of Samsung SDS Middle East and Africa said: “Expanding geographically brings challenges, including the issue of how to connect different markets to each other. Distributed infrastructure is necessary, but they also need to be connected securely and dynamically to ensure that users can enjoy a seamless experience free of latency regardless of location. With the help of the Equinix’s interconnection platform, we are very well equipped to provide proximity to our customers to deliver optimal performance and the ability to rapidly enter new markets to meet future business demand."

 

Farid Faraidooni, Deputy CEO, Enterprise Solutions, Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company (EITC): “With a constant need to connect, grow and expand, enterprises today are adopting digital transformation like never before. As a technology-driven ICT service provider in the Middle East with formidable partnerships with global technology majors, our alliance with Equinix continues to grow in this interconnected era and is the de facto choice of a growing number of businesses. For firms looking to invest in enhancing their business models with speed, security, and scalability, datamena platform - an alliance between EITC and Equinix offers the ideal pathway – unmatched interconnections with networks, clouds, and vertical specific business ecosystems.”