What if I told you that you could have total control of your connections between data centers in a single facility, campus or around the nation? Capacity on demand. Maximum security. Complete flexibility. Then, what if you could extend that connectivity to cloud resources through those data centers, without physically collocating there?
That degree of flexibility and extended reach happen through inter-site and inter-market connectivity. Inter-site connectivity enables an IT infrastructure to share resources as though it’s all in one facility, even though two or more data centers (which form a data center campus) are included in the deployment. Inter-market connectivity happens when the data center provider can enable private network data communications and application access to facilities across multiple markets.
Inter-site connectivity business advantages include predictable operational costs, rapid, dynamic scalability, and the freedom to run any services you want over “your” network. Furthermore, both inter-site and inter-market interconnection translate to increased revenue because the enterprise can interoperate with an ecosystem of partners and grow business within a region and across target markets.
To explain how all this works, I’ll start by looking into the differences between lit fiber and dark fiber, which is key to understanding how different degrees of agility are achieved. I’ll follow that by delving into expanding your IT infrastructure to multiple markets and accessing cloud services in the regions that are important to your business. Just FYI, you can learn more about Layer 2 and Layer 3 connectivity in the first InterGlobix article in this series: How to Accelerate “Time to Cloud."
Dark fiber is unused fiber that an enterprise can “light” with their own networking equipment. As mentioned, choosing to use dark fiber enables maximum flexibility and control. It also calls for the company to provide all the equipment as well as the personnel to operate the network.
At first blush, the idea of investing in the equipment needed to light the network could be fiscally daunting. Enterprise-grade switches, routers and other IT gear required are expensive, and engineers with the skill sets needed to build and operate WAN networks command high salaries.
But there’s more to be considered, and use case is critical to the business case. Do you need real-time data transmission? Is the data highly sensitive? Do you need to cope with broadband bursting? Answering “yes” to any or all of these could point you to dark fiber. The volume of bandwidth required also is a major factor; at some point, the cost of lit fiber bandwidth services could exceed the cost of owning and operating a dark fiber-networked infrastructure.
Let’s say an enterprise colocated in a data center wants to connect to a network carrier that’s in another data center(s) in the same data center or somewhere in the campus. All the enterprise needs to do is order a dark fiber cross connect between their deployment and the carrier and, once the provider finishes the task, a dedicated, private network is moving data to the carrier. The enterprise can now share data with other entities colocated in the destination data centers by leveraging virtualized networking capabilities or more cross connects. The degree of interconnection hinges on the number of carriers that reside in the data center and, when taking into consideration that almost every enterprise employs a hybrid IT strategy, private cloud and public cloud connectivity. In many ways, the data center’s digital ecosystem – the roster of IT services providers as well as industry-relevant businesses – determines the online experience, one of the most important competitive differentiators.
Let’s turn our attention to inter-market connectivity. Time to market is accelerated when data centers are located near to current and prospective customers. But it’s not just a matter of speed, but also availability to a broader set of customers.
For example, consider an IT services provider that’s headquartered in Chicago, does the bulk of its business in the Midwest and has identified market opportunities in Virginia. A potential use case is application security monitoring enabling an enterprise to track of the health of core business process applications in near real-time. With inter-market connectivity, the MSP can offer their service in Amazon’s Northern Virginia regional cloud, proximate enough to the customers to attain the low-latency data exchange needed.
The next challenge is managing network and cloud connectivity. Earlier, I discussed how important it is to have internal IT resources with WAN skills. While that’s true, some data center providers offer an SDN-enabled networking services platform that serves as “the easy button” for network engineers. The Open Cloud Exchange® (OCX) is one such solution. CoreSite customers can access the OCX through MyCoreSite, our service delivery platform, specify Layer 2 or Layer 3 virtual connection and the service rate, and be connected within a few minutes of ordering the service.
READERS’ NOTE: This article was the second article in a four-part series: “Interconnection Insights,” published in InterGlobix Magazine, where you can find articles, interviews and information on trends in the data center industry.
Know More
I hope this post helps you understand the technology and business advantages of inter-site and inter-market interconnection.
Learn about how the Open Cloud Exchange simplifies and even automates networking services provisioning and management in this OCX explainer video.
When you are ready, get in touch! We welcome the opportunity to learn about your hybrid IT challenges and goals, and how discuss how CoreSite can help.