The joke goes like this: “There are only three reasons to complete an Internet of Things project – to make money, save money and stay out of jail.” 

The truth of the first two reasons is easy enough to demonstrate. The third is more complex.

First, it’s an exaggeration for effect. The punchline infers that a properly implemented IoT project should help companies avoid violating data protection and compliancy rules, but the penalty for that is fines, not jail. In addition, even the idea that the IoT helps companies avoid compliance troubles is unproven.

High-profile security breaches that exploited Internet of Things (IoT) vulnerabilities have created major business concerns, and people really aren’t sure how safe IoT is. These breaches have redoubled industry efforts to make the IoT as secure as possible, and the joke implies that these efforts are succeeding. But that’s debatable.

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In a world with vastly increasing amounts of data and dependency on the Internet, digital transformation is now paramount to the long-term survival of enterprises. But what will digital transformation in the years ahead involve? A crucial component for companies will be ensuring they have enough interconnection bandwidth to handle business demands in the future.

Interconnection bandwidth is the ability to support direct private data exchange across a variety of hubs and interconnection points within a network, bypassing the public Internet. These private connections are important because they offer scalability, security, and direct connections to copartners and service providers that companies cannot get otherwise.

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It’s in our phones, TVs, toasters, cars, watches, toothbrushes – even in the soles of our shoes. 

The internet is everywhere. Right?

Well, no. About 47 percent of the global population of 7.6 billion people doesn’t have internet access, as tough as that is for those of us in internet-rich locales to imagine. But companies are working on ways to bridge this digital divide, and systems based on low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellites are becoming a big part of the conversation.

The benefits of satellite internet are obvious in places where land-based network infrastructure doesn’t exist. But while systems based on high-orbit satellites need only minimal ground equipment to reach remote places, a range of complications – including cost, speed and performance – prevent them from being a global solution. LEO systems aim to get past the problems by getting closer to earth.

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The demand is there. The hype is there. But is the world really ready for 5G?

In one sense, the answer is, “absolutely.” The fifth-generation of wireless broadband technology will bring an exponential increase in data speeds that will change how people interact with the internet.

Networking used to be all about specialized “boxes,” but that era is fading fast.  

By a specialized box, I mean a piece of hardware that was built to perform an individual function. Physical firewalls, routers, servers, load balancers, etc., are all examples of these different boxes, and they are still everywhere. But new technology is seriously disrupting the old ways of doing things.

Virtualization has made it possible to separate the software functionality of all those boxes from the specific appliance-type hardware in which it resides. Network functions virtualization (NFV) software can replicate an appliance’s function in a more cost-effective commodity server, which is easy to obtain and deploy and can hold the software for numerous functions at once. People like the improved simplicity, cost, agility and speed that comes with this change.

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Digital transformation is ushering in what the organizers of this year’s Pacific Telecommunications Council’s (PTC) 2018 global conference called “a new decade of connections.” The global trends driving digital include greater technology use, urbanization, data sovereignty, cybersecurity and global trade of digital services, as reported in the Global Interconnection Index, a market study published by Equinix. These macro trends are behind the creation of increasing amounts of data coming from new sources, such as digital media, artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML), big data and security analytics, augmented/virtual reality and the Internet of Things (IoT).

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It’s been 160 years since the world’s first submarine cable linked a remote corner of Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, with Valentia Island on the west coast of Ireland in 1858. That telegraph cable failed after three weeks, but a new method for transoceanic communications had been established, and today submarine cables are a critical piece of digital infrastructure that’s fast expanding in prevalence and prominence globally – though not yet quickly enough to meet voracious demand for capacity.

Between 2013 and 2017, the subsea cable industry has added an average of 32 percent of capacity annually on major submarine cable routes, according to the industry magazine SubTel Forum. Still, the industry needs to do more. “It will have to increase activity to stay ahead of demand,” SubTel Forum said in its annual report this year.

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The science behind a lot of today’s newest trends is actually pretty old.

John McCarthy is considered the father of AI after he coined the phrase in 1955 and then held the first academic conference on the topic the next year.

The term “virtual reality” was first used in the mid-1980s, but the attempts to use electronics to develop simulated environments also reach back to the 1950s.

Then, there’s the Internet of Things (IoT). It’s a hot topic now, but it’s been nearly 20 years since the phrase was introduced in 1999. And the first connected “thing” (a toaster created by John Romkey and Simon Hackett) actually debuted even earlier, in 1990.

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The arrival of the holiday shopping season always brings sharp focus onto ecommerce, which just keeps disrupting how retailers and consumers shop. But it’s striking just how much running room remains in front of this trend, which already has a couple decades of Christmases under its big black Santa belt.

According to eMarketer, ecommerce sales will grow more than 23 percent in 2017 – and still only account for a tenth of retail sales globally. Opportunities remain huge in the online shopping sector, but only if companies can continue to keep the digital payments at the heart of it simple, fast and secure for consumers and retailers alike. That’s a perpetual challenge.

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It’s zombie season again! Not only was The Walking Dead back with new episodes this month, but neighborhoods around the country are about to be crawling with zombies (most can be staved off with a little chocolate).

In business, unfortunately, zombie season has been in full swing for some time. This is an era of digital disruption, and it’s completely changed the way business is done, but not everyone has gotten on board. Companies are persisting with outdated business models, investing in outdated products, and committed to outdated delivery methods. To me, these companies are zombies, dead without knowing it. They may be moving forward, but don’t let the motion fool you, they’re only moving toward obsolescence.

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The Internet of Things (IoT) sometimes has the feel of a trend that’s forever going to be on the cusp of a huge breakout. Figures fly around about the projected size of the IoT and they’re always massive (such as the 50 billion devices Cisco predicted by 2020). But the number of things in the IoT is already counted in the 8 billion to 15 billion range. So, shouldn’t we be seeing more from the IoT by now? Based on what leaders are saying in a survey commissioned by Verizon, we soon will.

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Interconnection is the fuel of digital business, and organizations must understand its power if they hope to handle the global digital economy’s increasing demands. For such a pivotal business enabler, interconnection has long been tough to quantify. But new research from the company I work for, Equinix, does just that by looking at installed interconnection bandwidth capacity and projected growth. The Global Interconnection Index, published by Equinix and sourced from multiple analyst reports, is an industry-first look at how interconnection bandwidth is shaping and scaling the digital world. It aims to give digital business the insight needed to prepare for tomorrow. 

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What is interconnection, and why does it matter?

Interconnection is the deployment of IT traffic exchange points that integrate direct, private connections between counterparties. Interconnection is best achieved hosted in carrier-neutral data center campuses, where distributed IT components are collocated. In an age when reams of information race around the world with the click of a finger and massive transactions routinely occur several times faster than the blink of an eye, interconnection powers digital business.

Interconnection is much more than successfully connecting Point A to Point B. Telephone wires pulled off that kind of simple connectivity ages ago. Today’s enterprise-grade interconnection has some key characteristics that can help take digital business to the next level:

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