The concept of globalization, or the increasingly integrated state of global economy, is nothing new. It is a trend that dates back nearly a thousand years, catalyzed by technological advancement and continuous innovation. The World is Flat, a book inspired by the Americanization of Bangalore, India, intricately describes the sequential eras of this phenomenon:
- Globalization 1.0—The Columbus days when we first explored the world and realized there were other civilizations on earth
- Globalization 2.0—The 1800s through the industrial revolution when multinational corporations began to conduct business overseas
- Globalization 3.0—The utilization of different countries to increase efficiency and lower costs
Globalization 3.0 detailed the experience author Thomas Friedman had in Bangalore – where everything from advertisements to employment stemmed from America. He felt the world had been flattened by the ease of conducting business globally via telephone, software, outsourcing, offshoring, supply chaining and insourcing.
So, what could come next? Introducing *drum roll*: Globalization 4.0. This era extrapolates 3.0 beyond people into technology and the low latency flow and storage of data around the world, creating two major technological advances:
- Interconnection adoption: Globalization 4.0 enables people to instantaneously conduct business and promptly access files from anywhere. At its most granular level, this transmission of data and information typically occurs over network cables underneath the ground that all connect at a given location; usually a data center. Inside these data centers, cross connects allow businesses to easily make direct connections between two different termination locations. Interconnection within a data center allows businesses to create higher performance, lower latency business transactions and improve end-user experience as opposed to leveraging hardwired cables. As organizations pick up on these benefits, they are increasingly adopting these services.
- Hyper-scale growth of public cloud: This market is predicted to surpass $1 Trillion in global IT spend over the next 5 years (Gartner, 2016). With IT modernization, currently being the top driver of public cloud adoption, enterprises are leveraging a mixture of on-premises virtualization and cloud services to improve resource utilization, business agility, cost savings and resiliency. Cloud is where business IT infrastructure is shifting to and it’s time to join the trend; however, it is essential to not overcommit to the cloud. More specifically, a hybrid-cloud solution is where most enterprises are focusing their efforts in order to achieve the proper balance.
As a cloud-enabled colocation provider, we have watched both of these trends unfold within our own data centers and are constantly challenged to stay ahead of an ever-evolving market.