Originally posted to the Independent Data Center Alliance

As workforces go remote, business and network footprints expand and connectivity becomes key to continuity and business success, IT infrastructure as a whole is transforming from an array of data storage and compute locations into a comprehensively connected network of aggregation points. As the need for connectivity grows quickly, network platform and solutions creators are looking for new ways to help businesses maintain agility, performance, control and cost with dynamic, software-defined solutions — while pivoting to the COVID era themselves.

In order to better understand this shift and the solutions that are powering it, the Independent Data Center Alliance (IND-DCA), a consortium of global independent data center operators collaborating to create single-sourced solutions for buyers, presented a session at The 2020 INCOMPAS Show, which took place online from September 14-16. The “Data Center Interconnection Trends and Capabilities” panel brought together leading industry solution providers to discuss smart connectivity options powered by software-defined networks, the internet and more. Panelists featured here included Ed d’Agostino, VP and General Manager for DE-CIX North America; Bill Norton, Co-Founder of NOIA; Dave Tomassoni, Senior Account Director for PacketFabric; and Mary Stanhope, Chief Marketing Officer for Unitas Global.

To start, it’s clear that the environment from which connectivity and networking demands are coming is changing quickly, so agility and adaptability is a core necessity. As Stanhope observes, this has impacted Unitas because the ecosystem in which it delivers managed connectivity and cloud services has changed. Now, the edge has become very different as people shift to working from an array of remote locations and are connecting to the cloud through various locations, destinations and interconnect points. This means that in order to deliver the solutions that suit new business models, conversations with clients are changing. Now, discussions center on what options are available to increase bandwidth, supplement teams and shift operations and management — many elements of networking and connectivity can’t be accomplished the way they used to be.

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