Today we see that cloud services are at a truly hybrid point of adoption, that the market is moving to maturity as confidence grows within the Enterprise sector. The Enterprise is now moving critical infrastructure to the cloud, across multiple cloud platforms, taking full advantage of the cloud’s scalability, flexible costs and global accessibility.

– Global cloud IP traffic will account for more than 92% of total data centre traffic by 20201

– Cloud Data Centre traffic associated with cloud consumer and business applications is growing at 30% CAGR or 3.7-fold growth1

As businesses continue to demand flexibility, the need to provision instantly has become an important feature of cloud management services. The demand for instant services has led to enterprise connection points being moved closer to the cloud provider, giving Data Centre providers an opportunity to strengthen their core ICT services with the addition of cloud connectivity.

Telehouse’s Nick Layzell has been in the ICT industry for over 25 years, starting his career deploying telephony infrastructure in Trading rooms at large financial organisations in London. In his current role as Managed Services Manager, Nick provides integrated solutions to Telehouse customers, working with internal sales teams and external partners, to enhance the value businesses can realise from one of the most connected data centres on the planet.

As demand for cloud services increase, how can organisations enhance their ICT infrastructures? What market shifts are taking place and how can these organisations facilitate this demand?

As Digital transformation grows thanks to the increase in cloud usage and the benefits available, ICT infrastructure now needs to be deployed in “near real time” to help organisations deliver dynamic scalability to their end users and customers. Cloud services and other connected services are typically provided by a number of different CSP’s, ASP’s and xSP’s across a varied geographical area which is evident in RightScale’s State of the Cloud report. It states that on average 6 cloud services are being used across the Enterprise, an increase of 25% year on year. Organisations are now considering how to access multiple connected services at a strategic network location, previously the preserve of Telco’s and ISPs only.

With cloud services moving into maturity, how has the enterprise’s infrastructure evolved to benefit from these services?

Digital Transformation places large demands on ICT infrastructure flexibility, for example a retail business delivering regularly changing multimedia content to their stores as part of a promotion, or users in an Enterprise placing large development workloads in the cloud for a specific project. Enterprises are realising benefits of being part of a connected community that enables them to be pro-active in meeting their business demands.

What are the key cloud connectivity challenges being faced by the Enterprise today?

While the traditional cloud challenges of security and skills required to both deploy and manage are now being overcome by more mature cloud users, cloud waste, provisioning, overall cost and scalability still remain. Surveys amongst our own customers also point to a steady increase in the number of clouds that an organisation utilises, highlighting a large number of our UK customer base requiring multiple cloud access. It is important therefore that organisations can handle the ongoing challenges, by being able to flex their infrastructure and cloud use to closely match the actual workloads that are required by employees and customers.

RightScale’s State of the cloud 2017 Report states that the Enterprise lacks awareness of tools available to facilitate and simplify multi-cloud optimisation. What advice do you have for organisations who are embracing multiple cloud services?

With the continuing move to consumption of multiple cloud services and other hosted services, organisations should ensure that they are positioned to take advantage of the flexibility that these can deliver to meet their business and customer demands. For example Telehouse now provides Cloud Link, a multi-cloud exchange platform that enables customers to access multiple cloud providers with one resilient, secure connection, enhancing the hundreds of connectivity options already available at our London Campus.

What can the CTO do to facilitate cloud connectivity and digital transformation, enabling a flexible, scalable infrastructure that meets evolving business objectives?

By moving your network close to the centre of these connected services the CTO can be ready to meet future requirements of their users and customers. Key to this is establishing a presence in a highly connected data centre that offers secure interconnect options to hundreds of Cloud providers Telco’s, ISPs. Organisations can stay ahead of client/employee data demand with scalable network provisioning and clear demand road mapping by choosing a data centre whose differentiator is connectivity. At Telehouse, our Interconnect community comprises over 750+ carriers, internet exchanges and cloud service providers located in 48 interconnected data centres in 24 cities worldwide,

Sources:
1. RightScale’s State of The Cloud 2017