Originally posted to Independent Data Center Alliance,

As data centers evolved from more than just compute storage warehouses to major interconnection and aggregation points enabling all kinds of connectivity solutions, that’s why The INCOMPAS Show 2020 brought together data center operators from leading companies to discuss how they are enabling software-defined interconnection solutions.

The discussion, organized by the Independent Data Center Alliance, hosted individuals from companies such as DataGryd, Bluebird Network and Bluebird Underground Data Center, NYI and DartPoints explored how platform makers can enable improved network performance, provide greater control, reduce costs and enhanced flexibility with fortified access to networks of all kinds – through a single connection.

As one could imagine, the conversation immediately centered around the drastic changes seen due to the pandemic response. Hugh Carspecken of DartPoints made the analogy as follows:

“What we’ve seen with the pandemic is a compelling event colliding with a paradigm shift, where the data, which has traditionally  found its way through the tier one market, is now trying to find its way into these smaller markets – such as schools. So, all of our networking customers are all in a flurry of making sure that they can provide ample bandwidth and applications to their students, which is usually on that very last mile. Which brings up the point that many network’s have shifted from the commercial networks, to the residential real estate networks, which has been a compelling event that has had people identifying a need to place resources closer to what their end users are using, not necessarily where the data generators are located. This has been very difficult. This is the equivalent of trying to sell fire extinguishers while the house is already burning down.”

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