Does your company’s infrastructure effectively support your business operations, financial and growth goals? More than ever, meeting these goals is largely dependent on interconnecting to networks, public and private clouds as well as the interoperability services your business depends on.
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The Ultimate Interconnection Buyer’s Guide
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What is Interconnection?
Data centers provide a central meeting place for networks, clouds and enterprises to house their physical infrastructure. Interconnection services are the physical (and virtual) connections between those companies that enable the exchange of data.
Highly secure data exchange
Lowest-latency connection
Increased performance and efficiency
Accelerated business growth
Rapid implementation and dynamic bandwidth and broadband control
(if an interconnection platform is offered)
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Top 6 Interconnection Solutions in a Data Center
Interconnection Business Advantages
What to Look for in an Interconnection Partner
Data Centers in the Age of AI
A cross connect is a physical, hardwired cable that provides a direct connection between two different termination locations within a data center. It is a fiber or coaxial link between your equipment and the equipment of the companies also deployed in the data center that you interact with – your digital ecosystem. A cross connect enables bypassing the internet via a private, dedicated connection.
Advantages include:
Excellent Security
Low latency data transfer
High reliability
Fast and easy provisioning
Private peering
SCALABILITY
Advantages of Cross Connect
Data center interconnects link two or more data centers, enabling resource sharing and access to all the providers and business partners located in each data center. Data centers can be within a market or between different markets expanding the potential of your digital ecosystem partners or connecting your geographically diverse deployments. An interconnect utilizes a high-speed WAN link, including MPLS, Ethernet and VPLS to unite the data centers in a secure meet-me-room. With the ability to deploy services proximate to users, the latency-induced performance issues such as jitter are minimized.
Advantages of Inter-Site Connectivity
Rapid Market Expansion
Expanded application distribution/ scalability
Consistent user experience
Disaster recovery readiness
Excellent security
True direct connection to major cloud providers is enabled via a cross connect between the data center provider and the cloud provider. Direct connects are also known as “native onramps” and offer a private, low-latency alternative to connecting over the public internet or backhauling from a corporate data center. They also lower business risk because there are fewer connecting points between the enterprise and cloud(s). Accessing major cloud providers is becoming an essential piece of hybrid and multicloud architectures.
Advantages of Cloud Direct Connect
Reduced data transfer costs, total cost of operation
Low latency access to data and services
Industry-compliant security
Rapid, ECONOMICAL resource scalability
Peering is a process in which two independent networks (peers) connect and exchange data. It allows directly handing off traffic without incurring extra transport costs for the transaction. Peering enables organizations to set up a more efficient network architecture and access multiple digital ecosystem entities through a single connection. Peering can be accomplished through a private network interface (PNI) or internet exchanges. The ability to utilize network interconnection creates advantages for enterprises, content and services providers.
Advantages of Internet Peering
Improved application performance
Higher bandwidth capacity
Better network performance
Increased redundancy, reliability
Global reach
Blended IP is the ability to use multiple internet service providers (vs. a single provider), PNI’s with large content and cloud providers, and local internet exchanges in order to transfer data at the highest available speed over a single circuit. Blending multiple upstream service providers, internet exchanges and direct cloud peering ensures the most efficient/fastest routing of your internet traffic and ensures maximum uptime of the upstream internet access. Plus, with single connections for traditional connectivity and fully redundant connections for mission-critical applications, Blended IP offers a quick setup and flexible bandwidth options, which is an ideal solution for production-level internet requirements.
Business success hinges on connectivity to clouds, your digital ecosystem and workloads. And with each additional interconnection, it creates the need for more management and port consumption. The CoreSite Open Cloud Exchange (OCX) is an ideal simplification example and is available through our customer service delivery platform. The OCX automates enterprise-class network services, drastically reducing the amount of time and effort required to order, provision and manage interconnection to and between multiple clouds, between data centers including inter-market and our digital ecosystem.
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Advantages of Interconnection Platform
Accelerates IT modernization/ digital transformation
Reduces total cost of operation
Speeds time to market
Elevates business agility
Expands market reach and addressable markets
Advantages of Blended IP
Streamlined management
Better redundancy, dedicated bandwidth, improved latency
72-hour activation interval
Options for connectivity, bandwidth and routing
Reliable, SLA-backed service
®
Faster is always better, right? Maybe not, depending on your users’ expectations, and your budget relevant to the service or solution. Low -latency networks and interconnections are the secure conduits to cloud-based AI servers applying algorithms, making inferences and guiding decisions. Latency sensitive services, such as IoT-enabled devices where machine-to-machine data exchanges need to happen in near real-time, depend on processing proximity and network performance. As immersive experiences (think metaverse) become part of both work and leisure, millisecond access latency and zero perceived downtime are requisite.
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On the other hand, email, reporting tools or even video chat services (which average 1.2 Mbps upload/download) don’t need to be as low latency.
The upshot is that your colocation provider should be able to cover the latency spectrum and facilitate customized, flexible deployments that allow workloads to be deployed where they return greatest value on investment, whether that’s on-premises, in colocation, public and private clouds or at the edge.
Let’s look at two aspects of how a colocation provider needs to address industry requirements: compliance and support for industry workflows.
When colocation data centers obtain certain certifications, customers can operate with the confidence that their data center deployment is compliant with the aspects of those certifications. Compliance encompasses both private enterprise and public sectors; government entities, by law, have unique compliance regulations and mandates.
COMPLIANCE
Industry Workflows
Digital transformation is driving an unprecedented degree of industry-specific interconnection requirements. Even industries that traditionally have not trusted third-party colocation providers, for example financial services, are recognizing that the speed, data residency, security and reliability they need can be achieved through colocation.
Interconnection across your digital ecosystem is one of the most important factors in your success. Your business is interconnected to partners and digital platforms by a native digital supply chain, the digital infrastructure stretching from an enterprise core to edge, including your hybrid and multicloud infrastructure. It’s “native” because it is “on-net” and extends the concept of cloud native (developed specifically for cloud) into the holistic infrastructure. The “goods” of the supply chain are data shared in digital ecosystems, passed by services deployed on-premises, in colocation data centers and clouds, and at edges.
Ecosystem Density
Proximity
Reducing the distance between ecosystem members by colocating in the same facility or data center campus is a simple solution for minimizing latency. Cloud adjacency provides low-latency, private connection to public cloud and cuts data transport costs.
Direct Connections
The denser the ecosystem, the greater the ability to create automated, personalized and frictionless experiences, and grow the core business, expand the network and portfolio, and generate revenues from new products and services.
Private physical and virtual connections between ecosystem members, which are the most secure and lowest latency. Direct connections to major cloud providers (CSPs) facilitate high performance utilization of cloud services and drastically reduce data egress fees.
We suggest that you look to these capabilities as high-level differentiators as you begin vetting potential data center and interconnection partners. When you meet with their team, ask for in-depth information on the following:
How easily can someone from your company get to the physical location? If you ever need to upgrade or service your equipment, this is a huge consideration. Second, do they have data centers in markets where you want to grow your business?
Data center location
Is the facility carrier-neutral? Do they have a large ecosystem of customers already interconnecting?
Network density
Are they open to build exactly the deployment you need, not an out-of-the-box solution? Find out the availability of additional space, power and connectivity. Don't hinder your business by choosing a provider that can't provide flexibility and scalability.
Customized deployment
Direct connections to major cloud providers are a must-have. Understanding of where the cloud onramps are physically located can have a direct impact on performance, latency and risk.
Cloud onramps
Establishing and managing a hybrid and multicloud environment is time-intensive. Ask whether they have a platform built to simplify network connectivity and cloud connectivity services.
Infrastructure management tools
Learn about their onsite security team. What type of training is required for their data center technicians? While it’s easy to get distracted by the technology inside a data center’s four walls, it’s the people you work with or who handle issues that make the relationship one you want to grow – or not.
Data center services
CUSTOMiZED DEPLOYMENT
DATA CENTER LOCATION
CLOUD ONRAMPS
NETWORK DENSITY
INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT TOOLS
DATA CENTER SERVICES
ROBUST INTERCONNECTION
Resilient connections between systems enabling security and reliability.
Robust interconnection
Artificial intelligence and generative AI workloads require high-density compute and high bandwidth, low-latency networks to effectively exchange data generated at endpoints to the AI solutions in on-premises or colocation data centers and public clouds. Colocation data centers are being recognized as an optimal environment for enabling AI and balancing workload distribution. Inference, the ability for AI applications to make decisions on new information after being trained, is now a reality. Inference is also critically dependent on real-time data exchange. This creates “Inference Zones,” geographic regions surrounding the data centers in which inferencing happens.
