Fields of Fiber

Technology is certainly an essential component of today’s digital transformation efforts, but is it in the driver’s seat? Today’s articles once again indicate that it is business (or organizational) needs that drive the selection and deployment of technology in successful initiatives.

Technology for the sake of technology doesn’t increase efficiency, efficacy or value – but new technology implementations guided by business needs can deliver all three.

These news roundups tend to have a strong focus on new innovations and bleeding-edge technology, which is great if you’re planning a new data center network deployment.

But what about the vast majority of organizations that have an existing infrastructure to maintain, while staying competitive and keeping up with new developments? This week’s articles all relate to the question of improving efficiency and capacity through integrating new technology into existing systems. This approach means extending the life of legacy infrastructure, while architecting new network and data center infrastructure to open up future opportunities.

Looking through the news we shared in social media this week, the underlying theme was one of changing architectures and new approaches to network infrastructure. These trends are not new, but where they were once only visible in hyperscale deployments and test labs, software defined architecture and open hardware are increasingly accessible to any business running a network. Add in the dropping cost and wide-ranging advantages of fiber-optic cable over copper, and the next couple of years are going to be very interesting!

Cross connect in seconds instead of days or weeks:

The cost and time involved in provisioning cross connects within multi-tenant colocation data centers is one of the biggest frustrations for the businesses they serve. The standard process requires manual provisioning by on-site technicians, and takes days or even weeks to complete even when everything goes smoothly.