REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — Digital service providers, within industries such as telecommunications, cloud and IT services, content and digital media, and technology providers, are forecast to increase private connectivity bandwidth by five times by 2023, primarily driven by greater demands from enterprises to close digital gaps at the edge.
That’s according to a new global report published by data centre operator Equinix (who recently bought 13 data centres from Bell for $1 billion).
The report also forecasts overall global interconnection bandwidth, the measure of private connectivity for the transfer of data between organizations, will achieve a 45% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2019 to 2023, translating to more than 16,300 terabits per second (Tbps) of bandwidth.
“The expected growth is driven by digital transformation, and specifically by greater demands from enterprises extending their digital infrastructure from centralized locations to distributed edge locations. This comes as businesses scale and support real-time interactions by strategically interconnecting workflows closer to and across people, things, locations, cloud and data. The capacity of this connectivity is equivalent to 64 zettabytes (64,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes) of data exchange, which is enough bandwidth for every human on the planet (7.8 billion) to transmit their full DNA sequence in an hour,” reads the Equinix press release announcing the report’s availability.
Looking at the report’s forecast by region, North America will account for 6,615 Tbps or 41% of total global interconnection bandwidth in 2023. This represents a 43% CAGR or a four-times increase in interconnection bandwidth in North America from 2019 to 2023, according to the report.
“Leading Canadian enterprises are significantly focused on digital transformation projects. Much like the rest of the world, this has become more acute and amplified as these organizations optimize their employees’ experience working during the Covid global pandemic, often from locations that were not originally architected for,” said Andrew Eppich, managing director for Canada at Equinix, in an email statement. “The demand for secure, stable, low-latency connections remains, but now access is required from alternate locations like the home office.”
“Telecom providers, network service providers and enterprises alike will be looking for ways to optimize existing and new connectivity requirements. Private connectivity bandwidth will increase dramatically,” he added.
In terms of the various global service provider industries, the telecommunications industry by itself is forecast to reach 5,071 Tbps of interconnection bandwidth capacity by 2023, representing a 50% CAGR from 2019 to 2023, according to the report. Cloud and IT services will account for 3,594 Tbps of total global interconnection bandwidth in 2023, while content and digital media will reach 1,620 Tbps of capacity in 2023, it says.
Although connectivity to network providers remains the leading source of ecosystem interconnections, organizations interconnecting to network providers shifts from 73% of all interconnection use cases to 67% by 2023. Interconnection to multiple cloud and IT providers across multiple locations and cloud regions represents the fastest growing use case of interconnection bandwidth, growing to 16% of ecosystem connectivity demand by 2023, adds the report.
To access Equinix’s Global Interconnection Index (GXI) Volume 4 report, please click here.
Global Interconnection Index (GXI) Volume 4 Combined Regional View of Interconnection Bandwidth Forecast
