Findings from the Global Equinix survey highlight the growing importance of interconnection to Irish businesses.
Equinix, Inc (Nasdaq: EQIX), the world's digital infrastructure company™, today announced findings from its annual Global Tech Trends Survey, highlighting the essential role of interconnection and digital infrastructure in business operations worldwide.
Surveying 2,600 IT decision-makers from diverse enterprises across 26 countries, including 100 IT leaders in Ireland, the study reveals that 42% of IT decision-makers in Ireland believe that avoiding the public internet is crucial for the daily function of their organisation.
The post-pandemic shift towards hybrid and remote working arrangements underscores the need for enterprises to have reliable and seamless connectivity with employees, customers, and partners. Increasingly, that requires bypassing the public internet in order to avoid latency issues.
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IT leaders are also avoiding the public internet to mitigate cyber risk. The Global Interconnection Index (GXI) Volume 4, a market study published by Equinix in October 2020, identified that distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks grew by more than 270% last year, while 30% of companies are being challenged by thousands of insecure devices connecting into their systems daily and without IT oversight.
Equinix’s survey examined the benefits that interconnection is bringing to businesses in Ireland. Increased flexibility (44%), improved network optimisation (42%) and lower connectivity costs (41%) were named by IT leaders in Ireland as the top benefits.
The study also reflects how certain sectors transformed as a result of the pandemic. The desire for contactless payments provided a boost to e-commerce and digital payments providers. Now, nearly half (46%) of IT decision-makers in Ireland expect financial services to benefit the most from interconnection in the next 5 years. Meanwhile, 35% believe that education – which was catapulted into the virtual world during COVID-19 restrictions – will be the sector that benefits the most.
The case for wide scale adoption of hybrid multi-cloud strategies for business, which boosts flexibility and enhances network optimisation, has therefore never been more pronounced. Equinix Fabric enables businesses to bypass the public internet by privately, securely and seamlessly interconnecting with the world’s largest cloud providers. As Equinix offers direct access to the highest concentration of cloud provider onramps in the world, enterprises can also deploy a cloud-first strategy that best suits their, and their employees’, ever-changing business requirements.
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Commenting on the findings, Maurice Mortell, Managing Director for Ireland, Equinix said: “Pre-pandemic, the far-reaching benefits of interconnection to business operations were already starting to be acknowledged at boardroom level. Once the pandemic hit, they transitioned from being benefits to becoming essential business requirements as enterprises grappled with the realities of a distributed workforce, and the litany of associated security challenges.”
Mr. Mortell also added: “The findings from our report suggest that IT decision-makers in Ireland are now acutely aware that they must be interconnecting privately to successfully and securely navigate the new way of working and doing business. Without interconnection, they are effectively putting their businesses – and their customers’ data – on the line.”
Equinix Fabric is available in 45+ locations across five continents, having recently expanded into seven new EMEA markets, further broadening accessibility and reach of the platform.
Source: Written from press release.
