It’s nearly impossible to do business or generally engage in society without connecting to the internet. If you need to meet with coworkers, order dinner or get new clothes, chances are it’s happening online. And sure, you might still do all those things in person instead, but our society is headed in a direction where those activities might only happen online. There are now more people worldwide who use the internet than those who don’t. In January 2022, 4.95 billion people used the internet - nearly 63% of the world’s population. Furthermore, 192 million of those people were newcomers in the last 12 months, getting online for the first time - proof that the digital revolution continues to grow.
The networks that enable this connectivity have also evolved and grown significantly over the years. When businesses were using X.25 protocols, they might not have foreseen today’s adoption of private dedicated Ethernet and 5G networks powered by fiber connectivity. Our phones, tablets and e-readers all run on networks. Passenger jets, public transportation and everyday vehicles also need network connectivity to operate. Even traffic management systems, oil and gas pipelines and a strong retailer/consumer relationship rely on strong networks to succeed.
As we all know from being online, when an internet connection goes down or other network-related issues occur, it can throw a wrench into the works. The strength of a network can either make or break service offerings and application performance. As we continue down the road of accelerated digital transformation, networks are handling unprecedented stress. Businesses are constantly innovating, bringing new capabilities, experiences and opportunities to individual consumers and other organizations. Every new level of innovation puts additional pressure on the bandwidth of our current networks, leading businesses to find new avenues to deliver services.
The power of the cloud
Enterprise applications are becoming increasingly cloud-native and cloud-deployed, which requires network evolution. The days of one app or one server in a physical location are behind us. Edge computing is a booming market, expected to grow to more than $87 billion by 2026; as businesses continue building further out on the edge - where the consumer is - networks need to carry data edge-to-core, edge-to-cloud and edge-to-edge. Enterprises are increasingly operating with multi-cloud and hybrid cloud solutions, so information must travel between private clouds and public clouds. Modern business applications are running on distributed network architectures across massive networks.
For example, consider a global retailer serving hundreds of millions of customers. It wants to make the in-store shopping experience as seamless and effortless as it is online, but it’s an impossibility for each location because it’s too cost-prohibitive. They can cluster multiple locations or stores together and aggregate certain capabilities in the physical location while building other features into the cloud. Distributed applications can support this work, but only if they’re supported by strong networks.
What improvements does the network need?
For networks to support the continued push towards the cloud, three main areas need to be shored up.
- Agility: The modern business world demands agility. So many businesses discovered how rigid their operations were when COVID-19 hit, and they could not pivot quickly to meet immediate needs. Dynamism will win the day. Networks should be able to come online within minutes and be reconfigured as necessary within seconds. They also need to be ubiquitous with a mix of wired and wireless options.
- Capacity: Businesses continue to build out further onto the edge, which means networks need to follow. Nowadays, it’s not unheard of for a company to collect ten terabytes of data, which then has to be downloaded from the hard drive and transported to the cloud. More capacity at the edge can help aggregate that data and workloads to mitigate bandwidth and latency issues.
- Automation: Widespread automation was coming down the pike before the pandemic, but that only accelerated its necessity. Take manufacturing, for instance - when humans couldn’t be in factories, manufacturers turned to AI and machine learning instead. Now automation is the new norm, and manual intervention will prove too costly and complicated in the future.
Make the necessary improvements today
There are multiple ways to empower agility, capacity and automation to build the powerful networks that modern businesses need for success. They all essentially boil down to one underlying point: fiber connectivity, which empowers high-throughput and low latency - two table-stakes components in a cloud-based world. Fiber underpins the cloud and connects the sprawling maze that is our digital ecosystem.
Here’s how fiber-based architecture can empower continuous network evolution:
- Passive optical networking departs from a one-speed/one-price offering and offers more endpoints for a more dynamic model with the proper bandwidth.
- Distributed edge exchanges empower businesses to build at the edge and aggregate data at a local or regional level when necessary.
- Expanded automation means organizations can purchase and configure their network infrastructure without manual intervention, putting scalability in the hands of decision-makers at the source.
Networks are a vital foundation for every person and every business in every industry. We’ve come to expect that we’ll just connect to Wi-Fi, or our rideshare will get us to the right location, or we can just walk into the store and buy what we need - but none of that happens without strong, robust networks. We need to ensure that those networks remain agile and resilient, now and in the future.
