When Milliseconds Matter

Cyxtera Technologies • August 09, 2022 • 3 minute read

Hybrid IT, Connectivity in Interconnection

Depending on its destination, a data packet may traverse several networks, and miles of fiber-optic cables before it reaches its recipient. If this were being depicted in a movie, you’d see bright flashes of light streaming along gleaming cables, racing to their final destination. And all of it taking place in the blink of an eye. But what happens when a blink is too long?

When milliseconds matter, such as for stock trades or ad bids, even the slightest application latency can render public internet unsuitable. In fact, studies have shown that even a 100-millisecond delay in page load time can lead to a 7-percent drop in conversion rates, and for companies that rely on their website for transactions, for example, this can translate into significant impacts on the bottom line.

Hybrid and the three bears

Public cloud has gained a reputation in recent years as being the be-all end-all for companies looking to scale their business. And while it certainly has its time and place, it’s not the right answer for every workload. In addition to high costs, cloud-first initiatives are often plagued by performance issues, with latency being among the top problems. If you’re engaged in a business sector that’s defined not by minutes but by milliseconds, you can’t afford any hiccups.

In response, companies are taking more of a Goldilocks approach. One hundred percent public cloud is too costly, whereas 100-percent on-prem is too limiting. Hybrid IT, however, with its improved performance, is just right. By keeping mission-critical or performance-sensitive applications and data on-premises, companies can avoid latency issues often plaguing cloud-first initiatives and stay one step ahead of the competition.

Even so, companies need a way to connect their on-premise environments, service providers, and cloud resources with high-performance connections. With Cyxtera’s digital connectivity, enterprises can quickly and easily build direct connections between their colocation environments, service providers, and on-demand infrastructure. These connections can be provisioned in minutes and offer the flexibility to scale up or down as needed. In addition, digital interconnections provide companies with the high-performance they need to support mission-critical applications and data.

Best of both worlds

Hybrid doesn’t mean enterprises have to compromise in how they connect, however. Cyxtera gives customers the flexibility of digital connectivity and traditional physical connectivity options.

Cyxtera’s digital interconnection, delivered through the Digital Exchange, enables one-to-many connectivity with the speed, simplicity, and control of software. Cyxtera’s Digital Exchange offers on-demand access to all the connectivity a business requires, including access to services offered by Cyxtera’s robust ecosystem of network and technology service providers. Customers can seamlessly and securely extend their data center environment with on-demand services, and can effortlessly connect to IP bandwidth, colocation in other metros, customers, and the cloud— all through an intuitive interface or REST API.

For enterprises that require physical connectivity in certain instances or who have latency-sensitive use cases, Cyxtera’s traditional, one-to-one cross connects allow customers to connect directly to others in the data center ecosystem. Whether connecting to enterprise-grade networks, cloud on-ramps, or services in the data center, physical interconnection cuts out the volatility of the public internet and enables secure, high-speed traffic.

While Cyxtera has long offered reliable, low-latency cloud connectivity via solutions from our partners, we recently took this to the next level with our Cloud Connect solution, enabling enterprises to connect to cloud providers directly through Cyxtera – there are no additional contracts or systems to set up and costs are reduced relative to third-party solutions.

Interconnection solutions that are just right

Whether delivering applications to customers or leveraging services on the public cloud, connectivity is a key piece for any modern, digital business, and it’s one of the core advantages of partnering with a world-class data center platform like Cyxtera. Leveraging our portfolio of connectivity options, enterprises gain access to more than 180 cloud on-ramps and over 600 network providers across our global data center footprint, enabling resilient, high-speed traffic to services, customers, and the cloud.

With 300-plus unique service providers and more than 1,400 deployments, Cyxtera enables enterprises to build secure, direct, and dynamic connections to scale digital business and accelerate growth. Cyxtera’s carrier-neutral, densely connected global data center footprint and thriving partner ecosystem enable enterprises to establish on-demand connections to network, cloud, and technology service providers.

Visit https://www.cyxtera.com/interconnection to learn how you can take advantage of our suite of native interconnection services.

Views and opinions expressed in our blog posts are those of the employees who made them and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Company. A reader should not unduly rely on any statements made therein.