As the modern world keeps racing forward, your business has no choice but to follow suit. Whether you are a small locally owned and managed national enterprise with only a few sites here and there, or a massive global conglomerate with sites spanning across the world, interconnection is essential.
Interconnection helps ensure that you will be able to connect with your customers and partners! Interconnection houses a few key characteristics and there are a few things you would want to know before you get started with it.
Without further ado, let’s take a look at these things!
1. You Probably Don’t Want To Keep It In-House
This is a hybrid infrastructure that needs to be set up between a diversity of assets. Technically speaking, the process of private data exchange amongst two or more businesses is called interconnection.
Through the deployment of IT traffic exchange points capable of integrating private connections amongst counterparties a Saas provider like ConsoleConnect can help you set it up.
Nowadays, countless bits of data are transferred across the world without blinking an eye, and that really goes on to show how interconnection has been empowering and revolutionizing digital businesses.
Although it sounds simple when broken down, it’s not just connecting point A to point B,in fact that was something even telephone wires achieved decades ago.
2. Your Interconnection Needs
Although, it may seem that you already know what you want, without a deep technical understanding it may not be quite so obvious. This is said because when it comes to services like this there is still a little veil of mystery that we just haven’t uncovered yet.
Before you go any further it is best that you take a little time to weigh all the reasons for you opting for interconnection. Is your bandwidth not sufficient? Do you have large sums of data always being shifted around? Is your latency too high? Are you able to get things done on time?
Once you answer these questions you will get a better idea of what you are looking for and how you wish you interconnect and access various streams of services, content, and data.
3. As Close As Possible
The very hallmark of interconnection revolves around the concept of reeling together companies, data, clouds, individuals, and even digital ecosystems. However, although the point is to virtually bring things together physical proximity doesn’t hurt either!
In that sense, reducing the distance between various parties will effectively reduce latency. Reduced latency almost always means a better user experience, especially as a result of the increased speed and ease of use.
Moreover, from a financial standpoint, you will find those close proximity connections which have been enabled by exchange ports and cross-connects are a whole lot cheaper!
4. Brought To You Via Exchange Points Scattered Across The Globe
Digital communities and businesses tend to be on the lookout for a place to gather their range of direct connections in densely populated sectors. If these locations are not kept as close as possible to these exceptionally populated areas latency is bound to be a little too high!
The only way to actually achieve this system of interconnection is through these globally scattered exchange points. Although, there is an alternative solution in which you can backhaul your traffic over to a central data server it can be a little too expensive.
5. There Are Many Options
In any industry whatsoever, it is more or less guaranteed that there is more than one service provider. The same holds true for data centers, there has been a growing range of providers across the globe.
It is no surprise that all of them do not provide the same quality! If you wish to reap the maximum benefits or to get any benefit at all from these services you need to pinpoint the best service provider for you!
You will want to consider support, availability, and cost but this is just the tip of the iceberg, there is a lot more technical information you will need to take into consideration.
6. Safety. Security. Compliance
Compliance and security are the first of those so-called technical details that need to be considered. State-of-the-art technology may keep them at the cutting edge, but that’s not all that goes into deciding who would be the best interconnection service provider for you!
You will want to know if they have disaster mitigation systems put in place in the event that things do not go as planned. A truly premier data center should maintain military-grade surveillance and security systems running 24/7 to ensure that their clients are not at risk.
The smart grid cooling systems and power infrastructure should have been designed to withstand category 5 hurricanes.
When it comes down to compliance, data centers with a larger clientele tend to be a lot more reliable than those that do more. Moreover, it is your responsibility to ensure that all valid compliance certifications and their respective licenses have been verified before taking onboard a data center.
7. Business Value Of Interconnection
In a digitally empowered world like ours, interconnection is not something you can pass off. Traditionally businesses and enterprises used to just connect to a backbone network that gets looped back to their own business, its respective assets, and branches.
Nowadays, it is not enough to just ensure connectivity between your own assets but also with other participants within your digital supply chain. By lucratively interconnective IT infrastructures, businesses can seamlessly build onto and expand their interactions with their core business partners.
Summing It Up
The digital world doesn’t stop for anyone! You and your business are no exception to this rule. It has always been a hard and fast rule of the 21st century. In a digitally empowered world, interconnection can prove to be a very essential aspect of your business.
With this, we hope you have been able to get an idea of the bigger picture as you ride the digital wave, and bring your business to the modern playing field through interconnection.
