Interconnection: what it is and why it's critical to the future of your business

While the world progresses rapidly through new phases of technology, connectivity continues to be the constant catalyst for growth and opportunity. In fact, in today’s digital economy, success is inextricably tied to it.

As businesses seek to engage with their customers and partners in new ways and via new platforms, and as their boundaries become more fluid, the need for seamless, fast information transfer is more paramount than ever.

For the average IT manager, this means that their role and their priorities have changed significantly. They’re now responsible for futureproofing networks for tomorrow’s challenges, without knowing exactly what they might be.

Compounding this uncertainty is the fact that existing systems were not set up with an eye to this future.

For decades, the heart of a business’s IT was the owned data centre, with technology platforms, software and development architecture built around it. Even immediately following the development of the cloud, the on-premise data centre was still the foundation on which to extend new infrastructure.

But today, as business activity becomes increasingly global and interdependent, and as data and devices proliferate, the limitations of existing systems are clear.

Centralised architectures simply can’t scale quickly enough to meet the demands of increasingly mobile and data-heavy users — meaning businesses can’t compete.

This new era, where cloud dominates and where companies forge advantage by collaborating with each other, has compounded the need for enhanced levels of connectivity. We call this the era of interconnection.

Forward-thinking companies are responding by moving beyond the highly centralised IT models of the past towards distributed, interconnection-orientated infrastructure. They’re looking outside the boundaries of the data centre and instead at how to build for the cloud.

We know that businesses thrive when they have the opportunity to partner and grow, but those connections also need to be in a place where they can bring maximum value. A place where security and speed are priority, and where businesses have greater choice in the clouds and networks they want to plug into.

Many are looking to colocation facilities to meet these new demands and, in the process, are benefiting from improved flexibility and performance, as well the cost and risk reductions associated with positioning their infrastructure inside the most advanced, dense data centre ecosystems.

IT managers can now breathe easy knowing their systems are futureproof.

The needs of IT systems have evolved wildly in just a few years; knowing what will be required in the future is an even greater challenge. But we believe systems should be built like a Swiss Army knife, with different tools under its belt which can plug into tomorrow’s needs.

This is increasingly important with the likes of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the other sweeping technology changes sitting on our doorstep. If companies are to have the front foot in this evolution, they’ll need to be able to adapt their infrastructure to take advantage of it.

Centralised IT models are quickly headed toward obsolescence and Australian businesses need to aggressively pursue an IT transformation. Interconnection is the key to freeing business to achieve the ambitions of today — and bring people, locations, clouds and data together tomorrow.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/T. L. Furrer