Digital transformation is changing how we do business, consume services and interact with the world around us, forcing companies in every industry to redefine business models and customer engagement experiences. Disruptors such as Uber in transportation, Airbnb in hospitality and Amazon in eCommerce tend to get the most attention, but even traditional industries such as financial services, insurance and healthcare are embracing digital technologies to provide more personalized consumer experiences.

Is your data center interconnected? Does it have private interconnectivity with any partner or customer you want to reach across multiple global metros? Can you provide fast, direct and secure access to a cloud or software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider that is not directly located in the same city as your employees? Can you ensure the local security your users require at geographically dispersed data centers? These are the hallmarks of an interconnected data center.

Over the last 20 years, Equinix has been a catalyst for global digital transformation. This is especially true of our time in EMEA so far, and it remains central to our future vision to continue to build our global interconnection and colocation platform in the countries where we operate in EMEA.

Together, Equinix and F5 Networks have delivered flexible, programmable technologies that create new hybrid IT environments without compromising on security or control. At the F5 Agility 2018 event in Boston, Equinix and F5 are promoting a new collaboration to deliver encryption key management as a service for hybrid/multicloud environments via the F5 BIG-IP as a Cloud Gateway and Equinix SmartKey™ key management solution by the end of this year.

Without world-class data centers, Equinix wouldn’t have been much more than a cool idea. Our data centers set the standard on five continents, and they’re part of an ever-expanding footprint that’s shaping the future of the digital world.  As the head of global operations for Equinix, I can tell you none of that is an accident. It’s about passion, diligence and design – right down to the blue light on our colocation floor. It’s also about knowing as we build on our success that we can’t take the lessons of the past or the rewards of the future for granted.

Requirements for real time, secure communications and data exchange with patients, partners, health ecosystems and network/cloud providers are forcing healthcare companies to invest in new interconnected digital value chains, R&D, diagnostics and care delivery models.

Today on the anniversary of EWLN’s founding, I am proud to say that EWLN continues to grow - we’re currently at 1,730 members worldwide - and is run almost exclusively by Equinix employee volunteers. Over the last seven years, our employee-led initiatives have added tremendous value to our business internally on a local and global scale and has significantly impacted the external communities we support.

Based on our experience in working with thousands of customers who’ve moved data and applications to the cloud, we’ve identified three critical pain points that impede an enterprise’s ability to effectively and efficiently manage encryption keys in the cloud.

In a digital age, volumes of data from decades worth of film can be collected, tagged and sorted, and AI and machine learning can be applied to find patterns in pacing, in dialogue, in tone, in colors, in music, in narrative structure, in any number of variables that can help explain why a given film succeeds well past a conventional explanation like, “It starred ‘The Rock.’”

Companies often see fast and significant value from predictive maintenance initiatives, and they are becoming more prevalent. A new report written by Pierre Audoin Consultants (PAC) and sponsored by Equinix indicates 55% of companies are at least piloting predictive maintenance initiatives.