The Intelligent Age: Bridging the Visible and Invisible in a Tech-Driven World

Technology has become so infused in modern life that it’s easy to take for granted. Smartphones put the world at our fingertips, connecting us with family and friends at a distance and providing instant access to information on every topic imaginable. Through advancements in AI, we’ve built intelligence into everyday devices like our watches, refrigerators, lightbulbs, cars and vacuum cleaners. Technology helps us monitor our health, learn faster, shop smarter, work remotely, and save time and energy on mundane tasks—among many other possibilities. We are truly living in the intelligent age.

When the internet became available to the public in the 1990s, it ushered in a new era for humanity. Since that time, it has radically altered our world—so much so that we rarely think about what makes global digital access possible. And now, AI is similarly transforming the world, infusing everything around us and changing the way organizations operate. These technologies often feel invisible and intangible, but there’s real physical infrastructure behind them, as well as countless people building and maintaining the compute systems, data storage and interconnected networks through which huge volumes of information travel the globe every day.

Technology is physical

Infrastructure is largely out of sight to the average user. However, there’d be no internet, no digital technology, and no AI, without it. As artificial intelligence evolves and its adoption accelerates, we need unprecedented levels of computational power, secure storage of high-value, proprietary data, and secure connectivity across distributed IT infrastructures.

High-performance data centers are the facilities that house much of this IT infrastructure—not only the systems, networks and applications that form the backbone of the intelligent age, but also the power supply, cooling, racks, cabinets and other required equipment. Physical fiber-optic cables carry information between parties and locations, while subsea cables traverse the oceans to connect continents digitally.

The emerging technologies that have come in the wake of the internet, such as cloud computing, the internet of things (IoT), 5G cellular networks and AI, only exist because this physical infrastructure, living largely in data centers, supports them.

Technology is people-powered

Physical hardware isn’t the only thing operating behind the scenes of today’s digital technologies. Our digital lives in the intelligent age wouldn’t be possible without the people who build, maintain and optimize this physical infrastructure. Everywhere on the planet, there are engineers, architects, system administrators, technicians, logistics teams and many other technical professionals who make these world-altering technologies function.

People are working hard, around the clock, to keep our intelligent systems online:

• Designing, building and operating data centers that house the world’s IT infrastructure
• Ensuring data center security to protect the data that’s become a valuable resource
• Managing and designing networks to be resilient against natural disasters and other outages
• Building and maintaining subsea cables to connect countries and continents
• Maintaining wind turbines and solar systems that power data centers

The intelligent age is here and now

It’s no surprise that “Collaboration for the Intelligent Age” is the theme of the 2025 World Economic Forum.[1] Technologies like AI are bringing rapid transformation, and they offer immense promise for delivering greater efficiency and insight across industries. But they also come with technical and ethical challenges. To use AI responsibly and sustainably, world leaders must understand the risks and work to ensure that we use technology wisely. The intelligent age has profound potential to deliver human progress. We’re already seeing this, but there’s much more to come.

At Equinix, we think about IT infrastructure every day. It’s our bread and butter, as are the people who make it work. Even with all the talk about AI and automation, human expertise and collaboration remain the backbone of our digital world. Our global data center workforce, along with countless others in the technology ecosystems that collaborate and exchange value in our data centers, plays a significant role in keeping the internet, and all the digital technologies that rely on it, operating smoothly.

As we think about what’s really behind the intelligent age, supporting the cutting-edge technologies that are reshaping our world, we’ll explore three global digital corridors that showcase the interplay between physical infrastructure and the people who keep that vital infrastructure working.

• In the United Kingdom, London and Manchester serve as the leading financial hub of Europe and a major innovation epicenter since the Industrial Revolution, respectively.
• In the United States, Washington, D.C., and Culpeper, Virginia, are part of the biggest data center market on Earth. Northern Virginia had an important role in the early internet and serves as a key location for many leading technology and network service providers.
• In Australia, Sydney and Melbourne have been a hotbed of tech innovation for more than a century. Today, the country serves as a key hub for global connectivity.

Let’s dive a bit deeper into each of these locations to explore the myriad ways technology and people are working together around the world to power this age of intelligence.

London: Europe’s cloud and finance hub

London is widely recognized as the leading financial, telecommunications and technology hub of Europe. It’s no surprise that it’s also Europe’s biggest data center market, and that it’s attracted global hyperscalers. Cloud on-ramps to all major providers are hosted throughout Greater London. Digital businesses can get on-demand access to flexible infrastructure, all while tapping into one of Europe’s largest population centers.

The city also occupies a key place in the history of digital infrastructure. The first subsea cables were launched in the 1850s between Dover and Calais, thus enabling direct connectivity between London and Paris. This makes London one of the birthplaces of global telecommunications. Many years later, London remains firmly connected with Paris—and with other core cities like Amsterdam and Frankfurt—along Europe’s most important digital corridor.

For financial firms operating in Europe, deploying in London is non-negotiable. In particular, trading firms must get as close as possible to the action, and that action happens in London. For these firms, even a few nanoseconds of latency could mean the difference between a successful trade and a missed opportunity. They need to place their workloads in proximity to financial exchanges in London, so that their data traffic won’t have to cover long distances every time they execute a trade.

The value of London as a digital hub is clear, and we at Equinix are very familiar with that value. We operate many colocation and hyperscale data centers throughout Greater London to help our customers take advantage of everything this thriving market offers. That said, it would be short-sighted to think London is the only place to deploy in Europe. Even within the U.K., there are emerging markets that merit attention from any digital business that’s looking to expand, and Manchester is chief among these.

Manchester: From Industrial Revolution to digital revolution

As the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, Manchester has a long tradition of being the first to implement world-changing ideas. Another example is the Williams tube, the world’s first RAM storage device, which was developed at the University of Manchester in the 1940s. Researchers at the university also developed the Manchester Baby, the world’s first electronic computer capable of running stored programs, as a proof-of-concept for the Williams tube.

Today, this tradition of innovation continues. The city is home to a thriving digital economy, valued at more than £5 billion and employing more than 88,000 people.[2] The U.K. government has made investing in digital growth a top priority, and Manchester has benefited greatly from this focus.[3] Thanks to this investment—not to mention forward-thinking leadership and a strong pipeline of talent from local universities—Greater Manchester has birthed more than 1,600 tech startups[4] while also attracting top global brands.

In particular, Manchester is among the European leaders in the content and digital media space. The city is home to MediaCityUK, Europe’s first and largest purpose-built digital media hub.[5] Major media organizations like the BBC and ITV have a presence at MediaCityUK, and a robust local ecosystem of data centers and content distribution networks has formed to support them. Any European business that relies on getting content in front of eyeballs cannot afford to ignore Manchester, for the simple reason that there are a lot of eyeballs to be found there: The city is the gateway to North West England, a region of more than 7 million people.

Manchester and London are not in competition with one another—at least not when it comes to data centers. Each city’s proximity to the other is a tremendous asset. The fact that low-latency connectivity is readily available between them means that many businesses are choosing a dual-deployment strategy. For instance, in a post-Brexit world, the U.K. has different data standards than the rest of Europe. Deploying in both London and Manchester can help businesses establish geo-redundancy for sensitive data while also meeting their data sovereignty requirements. To support these customers, we currently operate four Equinix IBX® colocation data centers in Manchester.

Data centers are essential—as are the people who run them

In 2024, the U.K. government announced that data centers would be classified as Critical National Infrastructure (CNI), the same designation already given to water, energy and emergency services systems.[6] This is the clearest signal yet that the government understands the importance of data centers, and that it’s willing to do what it takes to keep them running. This announcement will help multinational businesses feel confident that deploying in the U.K. is a safe bet.

If data centers are essential to the U.K. digital economy, then the country can’t afford to overlook the people who keep data centers running. We don’t have to look very far back for an example of how important these workers can be. The U.K. was among the first jurisdictions to classify data center staff as essential during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.[7] As the nation shifted to virtual work and schooling, data center professionals were there to ensure the backbone of the internet functioned properly despite the massive spike in demand.

It’s essential that we invest in the next generation of data center workers to prepare for any future challenges the nation might face—and any future opportunities. One way we’re doing that at Equinix is through our apprenticeship program. This program helps U.K. students from diverse backgrounds prepare for careers in the data center industry.

The program is the first of its kind in the data center industry, and we’re proud of the results we’ve achieved so far. We plan to expand the program to Manchester to help increase the pool of experienced data center workers there. We’re in conversations with local universities about hosting the program as we look to replicate our success in the south.

Renewable energy technicians enable our digital future

One can’t discuss reliable digital infrastructure without mentioning renewable energy. Data centers require energy, and data center operators should therefore invest in renewable energy production. At Equinix, our data centers have 100% renewables coverage throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa. We’ve achieved this via a multifaceted renewable energy strategy that includes power purchase agreements (PPAs). These PPAs support new renewable energy developments such as wind and solar, which means they directly contribute to adding new renewable energy to the grid.

We’re encouraged by the success that the U.K. has had in its renewable energy transition, particularly when it comes to wind energy. The U.K. climate is among the best in the world for wind energy production, and the nation is taking full advantage of that. Although the U.K.’s first commercial wind farm only came online in 1991[8], production has scaled considerably in the decades since. This is one reason the U.K. was able to take its last coal power plant offline in 2024.[9]

As the U.K. continues to deploy new wind turbines, the number of wind turbine technicians (often called “windtechs”) must scale accordingly. Windtechs perform regular inspections, lubricate moving parts and replace worn or malfunctioning components. They must climb turbines to perform their duties, so it’s not a job for those with a fear of heights. Also, maintaining offshore wind farms can take windtechs away from home for days or even weeks at a time. This lifestyle isn’t right for everyone.

The challenges of filling the need for windtechs are clear, but so too are the opportunities for those who seek them.

Technical schools offer programs that can help aspiring windtechs get started quickly, and motivated candidates can find employers that provide on-the-job training. They’ll also get the satisfaction that comes from knowing that they’re enabling the U.K.’s renewable energy transition, and with it, the country’s digital future.

Increased demand for data center services in the U.K. is creating new career opportunities in different ways. The technicians that run data centers and the windtechs that help keep them fully powered are just two examples.

Washington, D.C.: From internet incubator to modern data center powerhouse

The roots of the early internet can be traced to the Washington, D.C. area, and to the Northern Virginia suburbs in particular. ARPANET, a precursor to the modern internet, was designed and built in the 1960s to link the U.S. Department of Defense with universities and research institutions throughout the country.[10] This meant that there was a lot of new data coming into the Pentagon, and that data needed to be stored somewhere. New storage infrastructure started to pop up nearby, and the Northern Virginia data center market was born.

As the internet expanded beyond its military roots, the Northern Virginia market remained as important as ever. Of course, proximity to federal agencies continued to drive demand, but there were other factors that helped make the area an ideal data center hub. For instance, Northern Virginia was not nearly as developed as it is today, which meant that the land required to build data centers was widely available and relatively affordable. Also, the region isn’t particularly vulnerable to natural disasters, which meant it was well-suited to host government applications that require high availability as a matter of national security.

For all these reasons, the Northern Virginia data center market continued to grow over the years, and is today the biggest data center market on the planet by far. Demand from customers in the region helped attract a thriving ecosystem of service providers, starting with early pioneers like America Online and continuing through to today’s global cloud hyperscalers.

The presence of so many service providers has helped make Ashburn and other Northern Virginia towns attractive to enterprises as well as government agencies. The more enterprises that deploy in the area, the more opportunities there are for business partner interconnection and collaboration. This creates a cycle that further amplifies business value. To put it simply, everyone wants to be in Northern Virginia because that’s where everyone else already is.

Culpeper: An alternative market for flexibility and redundancy

In some ways, Northern Virginia’s success as a data center hub is changing the dynamic in the region. Not every organization needs the premium data center space offered in Northern Virginia, as there are cost-effective alternatives that can meet their performance, security and scalability needs.

Federal agencies recognize that they need to ensure the continuity of their IT operations under a wide range of scenarios. It’s true that Northern Virginia is well protected against natural disasters, but “well protected” isn’t always good enough. Agencies need backup and recovery sites to host sensitive workloads, so that they aren’t fully dependent on data centers in one location. They’ll need those sites to be far enough away from D.C. to avoid any threats facing Washington itself, but close enough to provide effective connectivity to Washington’s vibrant service provider ecosystem.

Agencies are starting to recognize that Culpeper, Virginia offers exactly what they’re looking for. Culpeper is located only about 60 miles away from the heart of Northern Virginia’s data center corridor. This means that it’s close enough to provide easy access to all the business value found there. At the same time, it’s far enough away to offer a different set of opportunities.

To start, Culpeper is a small town that isn’t well known outside the data center industry. Agencies can use this fact to their advantage: They can expand their digital infrastructure while still keeping a low profile. Also, affordable land is readily available near Culpeper. This makes it easier for service providers to build the kind of high-capacity data centers that agencies need to keep up with growing data volumes.

Whether it’s a matter of security or capacity, agencies are learning that Culpeper can offer greater flexibility than more mature data center markets. For instance, they can work with service providers to build data centers that are customized for the exact security requirements of their most sensitive workloads. This could include implementing multiple layers of purpose-built, state-of-the-art physical security within the data center. In contrast, adapting existing data centers to new and emerging threats is often difficult and expensive.

Also, agencies can easily spread their workloads between Washington and Culpeper, thanks to relatively low-latency connectivity between the two locations. This means that they can get the benefits of geo-redundancy without incurring a significant performance penalty.

People in action: Ensuring availability and security

Whether they’re deploying in Northern Virginia or Culpeper, government agencies expect data center services that keep their vital infrastructure protected and accessible. Knowledgeable, experienced data center professionals are working in both locations to ensure that happens.

This includes conducting regular inspections, maintenance and testing on critical systems such as power distribution and HVAC. Data center operators don’t wait for system outages to occur. They monitor conditions that indicate the possibility of an outage, and then proactively perform the maintenance needed to address those conditions.

Data center professionals are also the first line of defense against security threats facing critical government infrastructure. Data centers are built with a physical security strategy in mind, but it takes the right people to execute that strategy. For instance, one key layer of physical security inside a data center is a check-in desk that’s staffed 24/7.

This desk helps manage the human side of security. Granting access to the wrong person could undermine many of the other security controls inside the data center, and the security desk is responsible for preventing this. Simply checking IDs isn’t enough; security staff must also confirm that the visitor has pre-authorization to visit the site for a valid reason.

Once access is granted, security professionals conduct continuous monitoring to confirm that visitors are only performing the precise actions they were approved to perform. They do this by monitoring feeds from CCTV cameras, motion sensors and biometric scanners throughout the data center.

Bringing data center opportunities to different communities

Northern Virginia is widely recognized as one of the best places to pursue a data center career. However, there’s also plenty of demand for data center workers in lesser-known places, including Culpeper. People may not pursue opportunities in Culpeper data centers simply because they don’t know those opportunities exist.

Data center operators can help publicize these opportunities and attract great candidates. One way that Equinix is doing this is by expanding our candidate pool beyond experienced data center professionals. Our Career Pathways Program targets candidates from nontraditional backgrounds, such as military veterans. This could be especially helpful in Virginia, where 9.2% of adults are veterans, among the highest percentage of any U.S. state.[11]

Those who prefer a quiet, laid-back lifestyle may appreciate the fact that they don’t have to move to the big city to find good jobs in the data center industry. Also, they’ll get to play a small part in bringing the benefits of the data center industry to an up-and-coming community like Culpeper.

Enabling the next generation of data center professionals

In the decades to come, we’ll continue to rely on the people who operate, manage and protect data centers and digital infrastructure. This means that it’s imperative we start training the next generation of data center professionals today.

Equinix is working to ensure that young people are aware of the opportunities in the data center industry, and that they’re empowered to pursue those opportunities. We’re doing this across many of the global communities we operate in, and Northern Virginia is certainly no exception.

The Equinix Foundation is an employee-driven initiative that provides grants to community partners whose work aligns with our digital inclusion priorities. Among these priorities is early STEM education.

Recently, grants from the Equinix Foundation helped Learning Undefeated[12] bring a mobile STEM lab experience to students at River Bend Middle School in Sterling, Virginia. Reaching students at an early age is key to encouraging curiosity about technology, which in turn will help prepare those students to pursue the careers that will make the next generation of digital technology possible.

Many of the technical innovations we rely on today were invented in Australia, starting in the 1920s with the development of the first artificial pacemaker. Other notable innovations include the black box flight recorder, Cochlear implant (bionic ear), ultrasound scanner and Wi-Fi technology. Early technology adopters and innovators relied on global connectivity for knowledge-sharing, collaboration and announcing their inventions.

Subsea cables are the most mature form of connectivity. Many of the main cables cross through the Asia-Pacific region. They land somewhere in Australia, but typically on the east coast of the country. By routing cables through Australia, subsea cable operators benefit from a stable political and economic system.

Australia joined the global internet in 1989 when the Academic and Research Network (AARNet) established the first internet connection from the University of Melbourne to the University of Hawaii. Early on, internet adoption was slow to take off, but today internet access is ubiquitous due to both strong telecommunication networks and the advent of the National Broadband Network.

Moving workloads to the cloud was not far behind and demand for cloud computing continues to build. ADAPT, a specialist IT Research and Advisory firm, forecasts that by 2025, 55% of workloads for Australian organizations will be hosted on public clouds.[13]

Sydney and Melbourne are the two largest cities in Australia and host colocation data centers with the digital infrastructure businesses need to connect regionally and worldwide and succeed in the digital economy.

Sydney: A well-connected hub for global businesses and startups

As the economic heart of Australia, Sydney is home to companies that span a wide range of industries, including banking, insurance, healthcare, professional services and media. Sydney’s local startup community includes cleantech, MedTech and life sciences and quantum computing sectors, with an exceptional density of talent and support resources.

Digital ecosystems are thriving in Sydney as organizations recognize the value of connecting with business partners. The seventh annual Global Connection Index, a market study published by Equinix, predicts that 80% of global B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers are expected to occur in digital channels by 2025.

Sydney is also a hyperscale data center hub with deployments focused north of the Sydney Harbour and in Western Sydney approximately 30 miles from the central business district. The distance between the Sydney-based hyperscale data centers allows companies to establish backup and disaster recovery deployments in colocation data centers within the city. The low latency is ideal for performing AI inference work.

International subsea cable connectivity is another major digital infrastructure component in Sydney. Almost all of the major subsea cables into Australia land in Sydney, including the Southern Cross NEXT cable system, which connects Australia to the United States.

It’s also a landing site for the Hawaiki and Japan-Guam-Australia South cables. These and other cables form the Great Southern Route, which provides a critical alternative to the traditional transatlantic route linking Europe with the East Coast of the U.S. It stays within Five Eyes nations, making it possible for businesses to move their sensitive data around the world while using only trusted infrastructure. This helps make Australia one of the safest, most reliable destinations for transpacific digital traffic originating on the West Coast of the United States.

Equinix has seven Equinix IBX® colocation data centers in Sydney that are business hubs for over 1,000 organizations and offer a high-performance platform for private interconnection. It’s the largest interconnected data center campus in Australia and hosts the Equinix Internet Exchange, the largest peering platform in Australia, enabling highly efficient, low-cost data exchange.

Melbourne: An R&D and tech innovation hub

Melbourne has the second largest economy in Australia and a thriving business environment. The city is home to multiple university-run research and development labs, attracting many students who choose to stay in Melbourne and start companies after graduation.

There’s a community of local tech startups that fosters innovation in sectors such as healthcare and fintech. Additionally, Melbourne is a strong financial services hub, given that two of the four largest Australian banks are based here. The other two banks have their headquarters in Sydney.

While it complements Sydney in many ways, in Melbourne, companies have the flexibility of deploying large workloads, such as those involved with training AI models locally. These models require significant power but not low latency, which its colocation data centers can support. Once the models are ready for AI inference, businesses can connect them to data sources in Sydney and other locations virtually via software-defined interconnection.

Our four Equinix IBX® colocation data centers in Melbourne offer a diverse range of network and cloud connectivity services and include direct access to the Victoria Internet Exchange. Customers can choose from an extensive selection of network services and numerous providers to connect directly to end users and partners up and down their digital supply chain. The Melbourne metro has subsea cable landing stations that provide secure connectivity to other parts of Australia and beyond.

Complementary connected cities: By land and by sea

Sydney is located about 600 miles from Melbourne, which is convenient for distributing workloads and data. Customers can deploy infrastructure in one metro and quickly expand to others as their businesses grow—regionally or globally. Given the proximity, companies can strategically deploy their disaster recovery sites in either location for geo-redundancy.

There’s excellent connectivity between these two metros; a significant amount of fiber runs between Sydney and Melbourne for physical connections, and our software-defined interconnection platform, Equinix Fabric, enables low-latency virtual connections. Colocation data centers in each city have landing stations for domestic subsea cables, further expanding connectivity options between Sydney and Melbourne and other parts of Australia.

When customers deploy their infrastructure in Sydney or Melbourne, they can tap into the richest ecosystem of enterprises in Australia and beyond, including numerous network service providers, cloud and IT service providers, and content and digital media providers.

Companies are prioritizing Australia when building out their global digital infrastructure strategies. Due to its location and strong connectivity to the U.S., Europe and other countries in Asia, a massive amount of global data traffic passes through Australia, making it a vital thoroughfare for global business.

People in action: Designing, building and operating data centers

Colocation data center teams prioritize ensuring the resilience of networks in this geographically remote yet interconnected region. However, there’s much more involved with running these essential operations for customers and continuously modernizing our facilities to meet their evolving business requirements.

At Equinix, teams are constantly learning new skills and technologies. The initial and ongoing training is top-notch. Our leadership team fosters a culture of innovation by encouraging outside-the-box thinking when it comes to solving the challenges presented by customers and those linked to running our data centers.

The operations team has many opportunities to innovate and use cutting edge technologies such as liquid cooling. They’ve tested proofs of concepts for various forms of liquid cooling and installed liquid-to-chip cooling for a customer in one of our hyperscale data centers. Other examples include identifying new ways to reduce power and water usage and simplifying how our customers deploy their digital infrastructure.

The Equinix design team’s impact reaches beyond Australia, as they work on designs for colocation facilities in various countries. This requires them to gain knowledge about country-specific market dynamics and regulations. We encourage our team members to take advantage of opportunities to work in different countries and apply their learning both regionally and globally.

Similarly, our construction team is focused on innovation in colocation data centers outside their home country. For instance, Australia-based construction team members have been collaborating in India to help launch our new Equinix IBX® data center in Chennai.

These opportunities provide job satisfaction, strengthen retention rates and inspire referrals of some of the brightest minds in data center design, construction and operations. Our employees are eager to work alongside and learn from colleagues who are driven to innovate and make our data centers the most efficient and high-performing facilities possible for our customers.

Sustainability

As data centers continue to ramp up power and compute, we continually focus on how to do so in the most sustainable way. Equinix was the first data center company to make the commitment to reach climate neutrality across our global portfolio by 2030. Focusing our sustainability efforts on Australia will help Equinix close the procurement gap to reach its global 100% renewable energy goal.

In 2024, we signed our first renewable energy PPA in Australia with TagEnergy. Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) are a preferred source of renewable electricity coverage, as they provide additional renewable capacity for the local grids. The PPA is Equinix’s first long-term renewable energy agreement in the Asia-Pacific region. The Golden Plains Wind Farm will be Australia’s largest wind farm to date. Based on current load projections, we expect it to provide the final 4% renewables to our global target by 2030.

In Melbourne, we installed a 1MW rooftop solar system which is our largest onsite rooftop solar PV system globally and one of the largest at any data center in Australia. It’s our eighth installation in Australia and reinforces our continued focus to add clean energy to the local grid and contribute towards decarbonation.

We continue to explore other sustainability solutions we can introduce at our facilities across Australia.

Bringing the intelligent age to fruition

The locations we’ve explored here are just a sampling of the many places across the globe where physical infrastructure and skilled people come together to form the backbone of our digital world. Each region is unique in what it offers and in the important role it plays in the global digital economy. And yet all three illustrate how critical the people and physical hardware behind the internet and AI are.

• Every day, around the clock, data center operators maintain facilities where essential data is stored, analyzed and shared between the world’s businesses, governments and other organizations.
• Network engineers and architects design resilient communication networks that enable real-time transfer of data between companies, locations, customers, friends and family.
• Cloud architects design and manage the cloud architectures that both companies and the internet rely on.
• Subsea cable engineers investigate and repair cable breaks as quickly as possible to keep distant parts of the world connected.
• Renewable energy technicians innovate to design cutting-edge solar systems, wind turbines and other renewable energy technologies to support a sustainable AI future.

There are many additional ways that humans are hard at work enabling the technologies the world relies on. The internet has transformed how we live and work over the last 30+ years, and AI is rapidly transforming our world now. As large language models (LLMs) mature, enterprises are putting them to work for inference and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and in the next few years we’ll see more and more practical generative AI applications in business. Agentic AI is emerging to enable enterprise AI use cases that were previously out of reach. The intelligent age is already here.

But with all this change, it remains true that technology has always been dependent on human expertise. Skilled workers are what’s really driving the intelligent age, and people are an indispensable part of building trust in the next generation of technologies that will transform our world, from AI’s evolution to edge computing to global high-speed connectivity. We must continue to invest in IT infrastructure and the people who enable it by developing and training skilled technology workers to sustain our critical physical and digital ecosystems. These workers, and the infrastructure they support, are driving our connected future.

As we accelerate toward a future defined by AI, it’s even more important to future-proof your business by moving to a sustainable, high-performance data center staffed by industry experts. Learn more about building an AI-driven data strategy and the advantages of doing so in Equinix data centers. Download our infographic, Shape your future with AI-ready infrastructure.

 

Forward-Looking Statements

This blog contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties as well as the personal opinions of certain members of our management. Actual results may differ materially from expectations discussed in such forward-looking statements. Factors that might cause such differences include, but are not limited to, risks to our business and operating results related to the current inflationary environment; foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations; increased costs to procure power and the general volatility in the global energy market; the challenges of acquiring, operating and constructing IBX® and xScale® data centers and developing, deploying and delivering Equinix products and solutions; unanticipated costs or difficulties relating to the integration of companies we have acquired or will acquire into Equinix; a failure to receive significant revenues from customers in recently built out or acquired data centers; failure to complete any financing arrangements contemplated from time to time; competition from existing and new competitors; the ability to generate sufficient cash flow or otherwise obtain funds to repay new or outstanding indebtedness; the loss or decline in business from our key customers; risks related to our taxation as a REIT and other risks described from time to time in Equinix filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In particular, see recent and upcoming Equinix quarterly and annual reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, copies of which are available upon request from Equinix. Equinix does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking information contained in this blog.

 

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[1] Klaus Schawb, Klaus Schwab’s Call for Cooperation and Collaboration in the Intelligent Age, Time, January 16, 2025.

[2] Manchester Digital Strategy 2021 – 2026, Manchester City Council.

[3] Invest 2035: the U.K.’s modern industrial strategy, Department for Business & Trade, November 24, 2024.

[4] Olga G. Codina, Manchester’s tech revolution: 10 early stage startups you should keep an eye on, EU-Startups, November 25, 2024.

[5] Why Manchester: Creative and Media, MIDAS.

[6] Data centres to be given massive boost and protections from cyber criminals and IT blackouts, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, September 12, 2024.

[7] Peter Judge, Data center staff classed as “essential” during pandemic, Data Center Dynamics, March 20, 2020.

[8] The history of wind energy, National Grid.

[9] Frankie Mayo, The U.K.’s journey to a coal power phase-out, Ember, September 20, 2024.

[10] David Kidd, The Data Center Capital of the World Is in Virginia, Governing, July 27, 2023.

[11] Ivana Saric, Alice Feng, Mapped: The U.S. states with the highest and lowest shares of veterans, November 10, 2023.

[12] Loudoun County Public Schools Hosts Mobile STEM Lab, Learning Undefeated.

[13] 55% of Australian Organisations’ Workloads in Public Cloud by 2025, ADAPT, March 3, 2023.