Software-defined connectivity planned for colocation data centers
Gartner predicts that by 2025, 80 percent of enterprises will migrate entirely away from their on-premises data centers. Instead they’ll follow the current trend of moving workloads to colocation, hosting and the cloud, leading them to shut down their traditional data centers.
I’m sure that colocation centers look forward to the growth in business, but the growth also means the colocation data centers need to become more agile, scalable, and flexible. This is absolutely critical to their business model viability, but the challenge to get there is greater than ever.
Colocation providers have long benefitted from offering cross-connect and IT services, as well as Layer 2 WAN connectivity. However, these traditional offerings really aren't meeting the emerging demands from enterprise tenants who want more integrated, more secure and more automated networking solutions. As workloads move across different environments, such as SaaS and public clouds, there are management and operational challenges for colocation providers who are now being asked to support a more diverse portfolio of connectivity solutions.