A Contributed Article by Vincent in't Veld,
director of marketing and business development, cloud segment, Interxion
"The
data center is evolving from a term to describe a room or building where I put
my IT equipment to a term to describe the facility on which I'll build and run
my business." - Richard
Villars, IDC
Enterprise
adoption of cloud computing is on the rise and will likely experience growth
rates of up to 100 percent by 2016. As a result of this rapid evolution and growth, more and more
companies are turning to the cloud for a range of compute and application
services. Simultaneously, we are seeing a growth in hybrid cloud usage, which
offers enterprises the ability to combine their private clouds and dedicated IT
with public on-demand cloud infrastructures, enabling users to benefit from the
best of both worlds through superior interconnectivity.
As a result of
this, in 2013, there will be an increase in hyper-connected colocated data
centers and growing volatility in the public cloud market as on-demand services
become more common.
Growing Connectivity
As public
cloud comes to be more intertwined with on-premise IT, companies are putting a
growing amount of their infrastructure into third-party colocated data centers,
which act as hubs for interconnecting private and public environments. However,
because many are simultaneously keeping portions of their infrastructure
in-house, many enterprises are experiencing latency and incurring high costs
from complex network infrastructures when attempting to access the cloud and/or
data stored off-site.
To remedy this
obstacle, data center operators are under pressure to increase the options for connectivity
from and within their facilities. Services like direct connects and fast
connection speeds to popular "IT highways" or partners' infrastructure are
separating out the most modern hubs from so-called "IT museums."
For example, Interxion recently announced Amazon Web
Services (AWS) Direct Connect availability in all of its data centers across
Europe via Level 3's network services, which offers customers a private
connection from their colocated infrastructure to public Amazon cloud resources.
Because this Direct Connect doesn't rely on the Internet, it increases
bandwidth throughput and provides a more consistent network experience than
Internet-based connections. This service is particularly attractive to
customers that build hybrid clouds with large data sets and real-time data
feeds or need to satisfy regulatory requirements by using private network
connections.
In the future,
even more emphasis will be placed on this aspect of data center services, and direct
connects to public cloud platforms like AWS will become more common - if not
expected or required by customers.
Public Cloud in the Short Term
Simultaneous
to this growth in connectivity, we will also see an increase in cloud usage as
a short-term resource.
Rather than
data center tenants automatically linking to public cloud options such as AWS
and locking into long-term contracts, there will be a shift in the cloud
landscape to shorter contract terms and a less predictable growth cycle. Companies
will look to the cloud as a resource for short-term projects or seasonal
support, making the market slightly more volatile as customers gravitate toward
more on-demand cloud models.
In a way, these two predictions will work
hand-in-hand. Because cloud computing will allow for short-term contracts and increased
flexibility, diversity of connectivity will become all the more important. Any
customer moving into a colocated data center will require the option to
interface and one day push workloads to the cloud, rejecting any facility that
does not offer strong connectivity and direct connects to popular cloud
platforms.
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