Equinix passed our 20th birthday last year, so for our 20th installment of the “How to Speak Like a Data Center Geek” series, we are taking on the topic of ecosystems. The timing is not a coincidence because, in many respects, digital business ecosystems have evolved in parallel with our own history.

If you’ve been involved in IT management in any way during the past ten years, you’ve no doubt noticed network architecture is being transformed. It’s trending toward a decentralized model where enterprises increasingly rely on a variety of IT and connectivity providers for network infrastructure and management.

By working closely with our customers to help them develop their digital edge strategies, we have identified four essential steps that, when combined, speed digital transformation and remove performance, cloud, security and data challenges at the edge.

Cloud technologies play a significant role in facilitating the global distribution and interconnection that make financial services easy to access. The cloud lets a financial services firm quickly expand its coverage to a new geography, optimize processing and data management for that location and remotely monitor performance without the need for significant capital investment.

To help companies demonstrate and realize the tangible value of interconnection-driven IT initiatives, Forrester created the Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) methodology. “The Total Economic Impact™ of Equinix,” a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Equinix, published in April 2019, provides companies with the framework to evaluate the potential cost savings and business benefits enabled by deploying interconnection with Equinix.

Most of the discussion about identity in the media and on the internet recently has been quite negative, focusing on violations of your privacy and the misuse of personal information tied to your identity. On more than one occasion, we have seen an identity management database compromised, which allows the identity details for millions of users to be obtained by darknet participants or state-sponsored cyberhackers.

According to IDC, by 2021, more than 35% of enterprise IT operations spend in APeJ will be consumption-based, with public cloud platforms becoming the preferred option for enterprises thanks to its ease of management and lower costs. Meanwhile, many businesses are capitalizing on private cloud to enjoy benefits like better security, regulatory compliance and scalability, especially those who want to securely integrate their in-house software applications into the cloud.

Last week Equinix announced that we will open 12 new International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers and expand 23 existing IBX data centers in 2019.  We've already opened the doors to facilities in Paris and Shanghai, with locations opening soon in Helsinki, Sofia, London, Tokyo, Melbourne, Seoul, Warsaw, Hamburg, Sydney, and Singapore.

Can you really compare network speed with network bandwidth? Though interrelated, they are two very different things. While network speed measures the transfer rate of data from a source system to a destination system, network bandwidth is the amount of data that can be transferred per second (“the size of the pipe”). Combine the two, and you have what is known as network throughput.

Ask anyone where they think the financial capitals of the world are, and nine times out of ten, the answer will be New York, London and Tokyo. Those who are following the markets closely or want to be more precise might include other cities like Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore. But Atlanta, Georgia isn’t likely to make anyone’s list of top digital payment powerhouses.