Advancing Your Networking Approach Through Connected Communities
In today’s hyper-connected digital world, the importance of network connectivity cannot be overstated. Modern-day enterprises need powerful and reliable networking infrastructure, or they risk consequences including lost productivity, profitability and reputation. But, the infrastructure of the modern-day enterprise is disaggregating as a result of digital transformation – and this poses a unique connectivity challenge.
Connectivity Today
Many enterprises today are embracing a hybrid IT strategy, adopting public clouds while retaining private clouds that may or may not be hosted on-premises. Where servers and storage once resided centrally in the enterprise data centre, those resources are now distributed outward towards the cloud. As workloads migrate to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms, proprietary applications might move to the public cloud and legacy applications remain on-prem resulting in a fragmented infrastructure.
This has placed considerable strain on the network, as the sheer number of services that need to be connected is accelerating. While the internet is often used to connect the dots, the internet’s substandard performance can result in lost productivity and dissatisfied customers.
The Tale of Internet Connectivity
As a result, businesses have employed a range of tactics to counter internet reliance. MPLS used in conjunction with SD-WAN has been the popular architecture of choice – particularly in the enterprise – but even this approach has its issues. MPLS lines are expensive when dealing with high volumes of data transfer, and SD-WAN often sends more traffic over the internet to reduce the strain on MPLS, compounding the lack of network control, latency and lost packet issues.
Now, however, there is a solution that eliminates the internet element altogether – direct connectivity to the cloud through colocation.
The Rise of Connected Communities
Colocation enables enterprises to build connections in a multitenant data centre (MTDC) instead of over the internet. Enterprises can either connect to the cloud remotely through direct connections, or they can move their workloads into a MTDC and cross connect into the clouds and service providers they need, all without relying on internet connectivity.
The result is a co-located network hub that allows enterprises to access a rich array of platform and service providers including the hyperscale clouds, connectivity providers, cloud services, IT services, financial services, IT security, digital media and internet exchanges and benefit from cost effective and low-latency connectivity while retaining access to their own infrastructure.
This approach has a number of benefits, including:
- Reliability: A far more stable connection and vast reduction in packet loss in comparison to internet connectivity.
- Performance: Significantly improved latency and predictability compared to internet connections.
- Security: Traffic doesn’t have to leave the data centre or expose itself to the internet, thus alleviating the vast majority of security issues. Messages can be encrypted before entering the cloud by placing HSMs right next to the cloud access.
- Agility: Connectivity relationships between cloud providers and services can be set up rapidly and cost-effectively.
- Flexibility: Mission-critical workloads can be migrated from legacy architecture into the colocated edge to shift spending from CapEx to OpEx. This helps accelerate and de-risk cloud migration and re-platforming projects.
A New Chapter of Networking
While internet connectivity was renowned as the best networking option available in the past, today, the standard has been set far higher. Direct connectivity to the cloud through colocation is an approach that mitigates the pain points of internet connectivity. With the help of experts like Interxion, colocation delivers near instant access to an already established connected community of partners, suppliers and customers who all benefit from best-in-class reliability as a result.
Any business can benefit from the improved security, performance and flexibility a connected community can deliver. But, for organisations that have applications at the core of their business, whether they’re enabling their community or their partners, suppliers and customers – access to reliable, low latency connectivity can be the difference between market-leader and market-lagger.
To learn more about the value of direct connectivity to the cloud through colocation, read our latest insights report from 451 Research.