High Performance Networks Mean Business

In this week’s Voices of the Industry article, Andrew Schaap, Sr. VP of Sales at Digital Realty, discusses the benefits of a high performance network and it’s impact on your big data strategies.

The best performance always wins. That’s true in every kind of competition, and it’s no different in the race to master our digital economy which continually changes and generates new business challenges.

Here’s a core lesson we’ve learned in the past few years. For companies struggling to collect and store more and more data: Big Data in and of itself quickly becomes more of a cost than a benefit. Enterprises need a seamless path to insight, fast, focused and at scale. Only when the appropriate IT infrastructure is in place can the true business value be extracted from the data and used to drive competitive advantage.

Network speed and performance today are key differentiators for enterprises across the global marketplace. With an effective cloud strategy in place, enterprises can gain control of their big data, quickly develop valuable insights and take advantage of the flexibility and elasticity hybrid cloud deployments deliver to drive operational efficiency. Going forward, analytics based on big data will be critical to banking, financial and retail organizations where time-critical decision making and quality customer service drives competitive advantage and loyalty.

Proximity is Key When it Comes to High Performance Networks
Organizations can reduce latency and improve agility by deploying their IT infrastructure in close proximity to the cloud resources that support them, either within the same interconnected data center or interconnected metro area. Both can enable a network to perform complex computing tasks faster and respond consistently to customers in real time. While speed is essential to load time in the delivery of content and media, it’s equally important when enabling a customer to complete a desired action, and receive or render a response in a matter of milliseconds.

Low latency is now critical to any business, from retail to gaming to healthcare. Especially in the financial world, or any industry where contribution to the bottom line is measured in transactions processed per minute. Consumers have come to expect that every online transaction, whether a credit card authorization, stock trade, or money transfer between accounts, will process without errors in what appears to be real time, or from a network perspective, with near zero latency.

According to online research, instantaneous website response leads to maximum conversion rates, and every 1 second delay in page load decreases customer satisfaction by 16 percent, page views by 11 percent and conversion rates by 7 percent.

Inherent cost efficiencies are being realized in migrating to a cloud environment, which is why 82% of enterprises are opting for a multi-cloud strategy. Agility and performance appear to be the greater drivers for cloud migration, particularly when it comes to launching new applications requiring high performance storage and computing.

Big Data Driving Revolution in IT
Due to our data-dependent environment, enterprises are essentially becoming data companies. So having the ability to quickly access, transfer, share and analyze big data can be a huge win for companies that can accomplish all of that efficiently and without disrupting their business or incurring new costs. Of course, this requires the right IT strategy that enables and drives the evolution of IT architecture along with the intended progress. Three in four CIOs are looking to the cloud as a way to supplement and expand their current IT infrastructures.

As enterprise business requirements change and technology needs grow more complex, companies now require a mix of physical data center space with public and private cloud connectivity –ideally, from a provider that can meet variable demands in scale, from cabs to megawatts and back, while offering the technical expertise to ensure the success of cloud migration. Organizations need a data center provider that can deliver on agility, performance and security, as well as support incremental future growth without limitation. This is not easy to find through a data center provider. Traditionally, flexibility and agility have not been touted qualities of data centers.

Fortunately, some data centers have evolved enough to deliver a more comprehensive mission-critical IT solution that includes access to an ecosystem of service providers who can accommodate evolving enterprise needs for interconnection and high-performance computing as they become ever more technologically dependent.

Submitted by Andrew Schaap, Senior Vice President of Sales Digital Realty.

The Digital Realty Connected Campus provides a secure, high performance environment to meet variable demands for space, power and bandwidth, without imposing restrictions on business growth. By offering multiple facilities armed with scale, colocation and networking capabilities in close proximity to each other, plus local connections to on-campus cloud providers, we‘re able to deliver a comprehensive solution that supports the evolution of your IT environment. If you want to future-proof your IT environment and ensure optimized network performance, consider making Digital Realty central to your hybrid cloud strategy. Explore how The Connected Campus can benefit you.