Dubai - MENA Herald: Equinix, Inc. (NASDAQ: EQIX), the global interconnection and data center company, today unveiled the findings of its Enterprise of the Future survey, which uncovered a rapidly accelerating global demand for interconnection that will transform IT strategies over the next two years. Studying the priorities and perspectives of more than 1,000 IT decision makers across 14 countries, the Enterprise of the Future survey revealed significant momentum towards the adoption of interconnection-dependent IT strategies by enterprises seeking to drive revenue growth. By 2017, 84 percent of IT leaders surveyed will deploy IT infrastructure where interconnection – defined as direct, secure physical or virtual connections between a company and its partners, customers and employees – is at the core, compared to only 38 percent today. The survey also indicates that interconnection can create millions of dollars in value. A full report of the findings, “The Enterprise of the Future: Unleashing the Interconnected Enterprise,”
In the interconnected era business models are increasingly interdependent and consumers and employees alike consider anytime, anywhere, any device connectivity the standard. Organizational expansion, ubiquitous user access and the sourcing of external business and IT services to cloud-based providers are forcing enterprises to have more points of engagement with more end users and business partners across an ever-widening physical and logical footprint. Existing IT architectures were not built to support this level of dynamic engagement and distributed coverage, and the Enterprise of the Future survey shows enterprises responding with a massive strategic and behavioral shift away from centralized corporate resources to distributed, interconnection-centric IT infrastructure.
The number one business priority for nearly half of the survey respondents is to drive revenue, and interconnection was at the core of all the strategies cited as key to achieving this goal. In fact, 3-in-5 businesses believe interconnection with employees, partners and customers is “very important” to their company’s ability to compete. Nearly half of the companies surveyed are currently pursuing direct connections to cloud platforms, with the vast majority (about 4-in-5) seeing this as a critical need to address within five years. And, most notably, of the enterprises already deploying interconnection strategies, more than one-third are reaping a total value of more than $10 million from revenue gains and cost savings.
Highlights / Key Facts
- More than 1,000 IT decision makers (CIOs, CTOs, chief architects and network and application vice presidents) from the following countries were interviewed for this survey: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Dubai, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Netherlands, Singapore, Switzerland, U.S., and U.K.
- The survey found that the top strategies IT leaders are using to drive revenue are all dependent on interconnection. The No. 1 revenue growth strategy, cited by nearly 69 percent of respondents, is deploying infrastructures to support new product offerings. Other essential interconnection-driven strategies include: creating new channels or systems of engagement between the enterprise and its customers, partners and employees; deploying infrastructures in new geographies; and embedding or distributing intelligence (analytics, data, content) across business processes, regions or office locations to gain greater customer insights and make faster, more accurate business decisions.
- Multi-cloud interconnectivity is a prominent worldwide business strategy, with 86 percent of the companies planning to interconnect to multiple clouds across multiple locations over the next five years. Being able to directly and securely connect to cloud providers, bypassing the public Internet, eases security concerns.
- Security topped the list of enterprise IT concerns, with 64 percent of survey respondents reporting that security worries could drive them to consider re-architecting their IT infrastructure over the next 12 months.
- Analysts agree that interconnection is crucial for enterprise success. In fact, a recent Forrester study, “The Total Economic Impact of Equinix Interconnection Solutions,” showed that interconnection yields a 300 percent return on investment, payback of that investment within 4.2 months and a 40 percent average reduction in latency. These findings align with the Enterprise of the Future survey results, which determined that more than a third of the companies responding realized greater than $10M value from interconnection via revenue opportunities (58 percent) and cost savings (42 percent).
- Executing an interconnection strategy requires an Interconnection Oriented Architecture™, which shifts the fundamental delivery architecture of IT from siloed and centralized to internetworked and colocated. Equinix’s interconnection platform provides the critical building blocks needed to implement an Interconnection Oriented Architecture across a global infrastructure with unmatched ecosystem density and vendor neutrality.
