What is interconnection and why is global interconnection now necessary?

For today’s businesses, being connected isn’t enough. To attract — and maintain customer loyalty and operational efficiency now and in the future — businesses need to promote, manage, curate, and champion true interconnectivity. Businesses that adapt will be better positioned to thrive in the increasingly interconnected global economy.

This blog will discuss everything modern business and IT leaders need to know about interconnectivity to not only survive the changing digital landscape but also thrive in it. We’ll start things off with a definition of interconnection before diving deeper into the benefits and challenges.

What is interconnection?

Interconnection is an IT strategy that allows companies to directly, privately, and securely exchange data. It’s the physical connection between a carrier network and another nonrelated equipment or facility.

Simply put, interconnection allows for data exchange in either a private or public connection. This makes it the most effective way for businesses of all sizes to have access to essential resources that support mission-critical applications and maximize the success of daily operations.

One example of interconnection is when a business establishes a network connection between its headquarters and remote offices, using a global data center network with an ecosystem of cloud and network providers. This allows seamless communication and data exchange between locations.

Another example is when a company utilizes a content delivery network or CDN to deliver its website content to users around the world. This ensures fast, reliable access to the website by leveraging a network of interconnected servers.

Interconnection vs. connection: How does interconnectivity differ from connectivity?

Connectivity refers to communications tied to a physical place and a finite number of platforms, systems, and applications.

In contrast, interconnection involves lots of platforms, systems, and applications collaborating with one another over a thoroughly meshed network via seemingly ubiquitous connectivity. That is, interconnection goes beyond simple connectivity and constitutes a many-to-many connection rather than a one-to-one.

Interconnection enables companies to connect to partners, customers, or employees globally to collaborate on or exchange data, creating new insights and adding extra value to these partnerships. With interconnectivity, everything and everyone can connect with everyone else, and communication (and collaboration) seamlessly happens in real time.

Connectivity used to be physical and centralized. However, for businesses to succeed — and remain competitive — in today’s fast-changing economy, they need to move beyond simple connectivity and thoroughly embrace and facilitate interconnectivity.

What does global interconnectivity look like today?

Today, instead of one location serving as the nucleus for the organization’s entire networking infrastructure and support, there are now dozens — if not hundreds — of server rooms, data centers, and network operations centers seamlessly connected to one another, all supported by a global, distributed team.

This means that with the current and evolving network topologies, the hub-and-spoke models of yesterday no longer apply. Everything is now integrated with one another, which prohibits point-to-point connections from providing true worldwide interconnectivity.

Add to that the fact that data is increasingly distributed across multiple locations, including on-premises sites and in the cloud, which has made hardware and software globally available and disconnected from any one physical location. In fact, most enterprise data is created and utilized outside the public cloud, further propelling the need for increased storage, compute, and security to effectively meet the needs of the growing cloud connected data communities.¹

Interconnectivity has also changed service-level agreements. While a cross connect facilitating global interconnectivity and providing a 99.999% uptime reinforces reliability for businesses, today’s end users have a need for speed. So to ensure business continuity and a competitive edge in today’s fast-paced digital economy, networks must be able to deliver high-speed connectivity as quickly as customers and internal team members need it.

7 business benefits of interconnectivity

How can businesses benefit from this increased interconnectivity? By embracing global, cloud interconnection in an era of digital transformation, organizations can expect to see the following benefits. Interconnection:

1. Enables seamless collaboration, locally and globally

With globally distributed teams, increased mobility and near-constant customer demand for service and support, businesses must be able to connect customers and connect to customers, anywhere, anytime. Global interconnectivity ensures that teams can collaborate and remain efficient no matter where in the world they are, what time it is, or what device they use.

2. Is less prone to error or downtime

A network predicated on global interconnection is far more resilient than one supported exclusively by point-to-point connections. That means if one part of the network goes down, the meshed nature of an interconnected network ensures that other lines of communication and collaboration remain intact.

3. Leads to reduced latency

An interconnected network ensures that data travels through the most optimal paths in all instances. Also, with a distributed network architecture, data doesn’t need to travel from a central point to all outposts but rather can be local where needed. This allows businesses to hold highly accessed sensitive data on the edge of network, which reduces the time to the user, and hold less-often accessed sensitive data centrally — reliably and securely.

4. Helps to realize the full benefits of virtualization at scale

The global market for virtualization software is expected to reach $386.8 billion over the period 2023-2030. Even further, network function virtualization technology is expected to reach $164.5 billion in the same period.² However, for internal stakeholders to fully realize (and appreciate) the benefits of virtualized infrastructure or connectivity, a network predicated on cloud interconnection must exist to ensure unfettered access to, and bandwidth for, virtualized assets.

5. Facilitates scalable deployments

With cloud and outsourced networking services, businesses can more easily gain the benefits of interconnectivity without implementing additional physical hardware, software, or infrastructure. Instead, businesses can focus on scaling their network capacity quickly and seamlessly to stay competitive and meet customer demands.

6. Keeps businesses agile and resilient

Interconnectivity helps with resiliency, allowing businesses to pivot to another vendor if an issue arises. For example, if the dedicated carrier access into one office goes down, the location can pivot to another connectivity option within their interconnected network. This is much like utilizing Software-Defined Network (SDN) technology to bring up alternate connectivity in near real time.

7. Enables AI workloads

When it comes to enterprise investment, global spending on artificial intelligence (AI) will reach $300 billion by 2026, according to research firm IDC.³ Complex algorithms, like large language models, need a high amount of compute power and density as well as an infrastructure that legacy hardware typically can’t support.

Colocation facilities offer the interconnectivity networks necessitated for AI and other high-performance compute (HPC) deployments, providing the requisite infrastructure large enterprises need to achieve agility, reliability, and scalability in a global economy.

Overcoming the challenges of global interconnectivity

Globally distributed IT support can be difficult to effectively coordinate without partnering with a global data center network to manage it, and businesses can find it expensive to maintain all that networking equipment. Because large enterprises looking to scale operations and grow revenue depend on reliable and fast connectivity to keep customers connected and to connect with their customers, logistical issues are simply not an option.

Another challenge is the lack of central oversight that can sometimes occur in such a sprawling network complicates compliance and cybersecurity. In particular, it can be difficult to guarantee that certain data is only stored and used in particular geographies. With certain tools and data sets legally constrained to certain countries or regions, promoting global interconnection can pose a challenge. That’s where dedicated, stable connections can offer greater control over who accesses enterprise tools and data.

Finally, high bandwidth is also a challenge to contend with in an interconnected network. With more devices and more users leveraging a greater number of high-bandwidth applications, like video, VoIP, and Software as a Service apps, it’s crucial for businesses to mitigate their security and compliance risks while significantly reducing downtime. This is where data center environments that can withstand and offset the risk of service disruptions come into play. By implementing component redundancy, businesses can reduce downtime, even in the worst-case scenario.

Who benefits the most from interconnection?

Despite the challenges of interconnection for many businesses across industries, the benefits far outweigh the potential (not guaranteed) hurdles. An ecosystem of cloud and network providers can offer a wide range of seamless interconnection services tailored to a specific business use case.

For example, financial institutions can use hundreds of cross connects to link to market data, exchanges, and institutions around the world. The functions are diverse, but the results are predictable. From connecting globally dispersed employees to deploying mission-critical infrastructure and applications, it all happens within a reliable and secure environment.

Harnessing the future of interconnectivity

In the immediate future, networks and enterprise IT will be further meshed and even less centralized than before — multi-cloud connectivity is now the new norm. Therefore, businesses and their stakeholders should expect more interconnectivity, not less, going forward.

As interconnection becomes more mainstream, devices and applications that now seem far-fetched will become reality. AI, augmented reality, and ubiquitous support for wireless networks and devices will all be seamlessly possible at scale, thanks to increased interconnectivity. That means global businesses will be able to harness more data than ever before, locally and globally.

However, none of this will come to life without greater enterprise reliance on outside support. To get this kind of interconnectivity off the ground and keep it running, securely and reliably, organizations will have to lean on third-party support with dedicated interconnectivity services like Digital Realty’s ServiceFabric®.

ServiceFabric®, on PlatformDIGITAL®, is our orchestration and connectivity platform, providing a wide range of seamless, on-demand interconnections services that can be integrated into existing IT management systems. It’s designed to support customers, partners, and developers as they transition to a more Hybrid IT and data-centric architecture.

Harness the future of interconnectivity with Digital Realty’s global system of carriers, ISPs, content providers, and enterprises at our strategically located, carrier-neutral interconnection facilities. Explore our interconnection service and connect with us to get started.

FAQs

What is the significance of interconnectedness?

The significance of interconnectedness lies in the ability to create a network of connected devices, systems, and applications that can communicate and share data seamlessly. This allows for increased accessibility, collaboration, and efficiency in various processes.

What are the positive effects of interconnectedness?

The positive effects of interconnectedness include improved communication, faster data transfer speeds, enhanced productivity, better decision-making capabilities, and increased flexibility in adapting to changing technologies.

How do we benefit from interconnectivity?

We benefit from interconnectivity by being able to access information and resources from anywhere in the world, collaborate with individuals or teams across different locations, automate processes for greater efficiency, and stay connected in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

What does global interconnection mean?

Global interconnection refers to the concept of connecting networks and devices on a worldwide scale, allowing for seamless communication and data exchange across different regions and countries.

What is interconnection in a data center?

In a data center, interconnection refers to the physical and logical connections between servers, networking equipment, storage devices, and other components to create a scalable and resilient infrastructure for hosting and managing data and applications. This allows for efficient data transfer, load balancing, and redundancy to ensure high availability and performance.

Footnotes:

¹ Digital Realty, Data Gravity Index™ 2.0, 2023.
² Global Industry Analysts, Virtualization Software, July, 2024.
³ IDC, Worldwide Spending on AI-Centric Systems Will Pass $300 Billion by 2026, According to IDC, September, 2022.