AUSTIN, Texas, March 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Digital
Realty, a leading global provider of colocation, interconnection
and data center solutions, today outlined a new manifesto for
interconnecting global communities around their increasingly most
strategic asset: data. The manifesto represents a vision, a
solution approach and a call to action to remove legacy barriers
across the interconnection industry, and tackle the challenges of
data gravity head on. The initiative outlines a new
collaborative roadmap to integrate interconnection platforms with
multiple partners and build the industry's largest open fabric of
fabrics connecting centers of data.
The transition to the digital economy has rapidly picked up pace
in the last year, remaking both public and private companies across
all industries, transforming how they create and deliver value. As
a result, enterprises are facing the need for a fundamental
architectural shift towards operating ubiquitously and on-demand,
informed by real-time information. Data gravity is the obstacle to
this transformation, and has the potential to inhibit workflow
performance, raise security concerns and increase costs, alongside
regulatory issues.
Today, Digital Realty is taking specific actions to support the
industry's transformation to a data-centric architecture and is
evolving its interconnection capabilities with an updated roadmap
for PlatformDIGITAL®, adding new coverage, capacity, connectivity
and control capabilities. This approach requires local copies of
private, shared and public data sets to be integrated as part of
decentralized workflows which originate and traverse across
multiple internal and external platforms, with policy enforcement
controls, real time analytics and interactive cross-platform
orchestration.
Digital Realty today outlined its plans to develop new native
orchestration and native fabric connectivity options to further
this industry shift. As one of many actions, Digital Realty is
integrating the IP and engineering team of Raleigh, NC-based Pureport, adding in-house
network software development to support the company's vision of
building open, SDN-enabled cross platform orchestration with
multiple industry partners.
The new approach further enhances Digital Realty's global
partnership with Megaport on its Service Exchange offering,
continuing the companies' long-standing collaboration on open
orchestration, and aims to accelerate integration with Interxion's
Cloud Connect interconnection product in EMEA. In
parallel, Digital Realty also today outlined its vision to create a
native direct network path between its global campuses, creating
new industrialized multi-path options in collaboration with
industry-leading partners.
Since launching its platform strategy at the end of 2019 and the
onset of the global pandemic in early 2020, Digital Realty is
building its position as both a global platform of multi-tenant
datacenter capacity2 and for interconnection solutions
that integrate global workflows, communities and hubs around
data.
Over the last year, the company has seen the uptake of virtual
interconnection increase by 27% for its Service Exchange offering
and 46% for its Cloud Connect product3 across Digital
Realty's global portfolio of over 290 data centers, as the company
expanded coverage from 36 metros in 2019 to now cover 49 metros and
increased its presence from 15 countries to now address 24
countries globally.
In March 2020, Digital Realty
significantly expanded its global coverage in completing its
combination with Interxion. The combined entity added 53 new data
centers in EMEA to the company's global portfolio and incorporated
key assets such as the submarine landing cable station and Internet
hub in Marseille, France. As a
result, customers now have access to more than 700 providers on
PlatformDIGITAL® in EMEA alone. Globally, participants in Digital
Realty's connected data communities more than doubled from 2,000
to over 4,000 in 2020.
As a result of last year's unprecedented shift to digital
business, growth in peering traffic volumes on the Digital Realty
Internet Exchange (DRIX) also led customers to increasingly migrate
to a new baseline for peering connectivity, with adoption of 100G
ports growing 70%, and total port capacity on DRIX growing 46% year
on year.
Across Digital Realty's global portfolio of more than
290 data centers, the pace of network cross-connect
deployments has also accelerated in the last year, growing to a
total of over 168,000 by the end of 2020, up 88,000 from the
previous year.
The industry has also recognized Digital Realty's rapid progress
since the launch of its platform strategy. Cloudscene, a leading
market intelligence platform for network services ranked the
combined company in first place in EMEA, and second place in
North America in Q1 on its Data
Center Ecosystem Leaderboard. Most recently Digital Realty advanced
to also take second spot in LATAM on the Cloudscene Leaderboard in
the second half of 2020.
Industry Perspective
"The accelerating shift to always-on digital business is
creating new architectural challenges for both enterprises and
service providers - from ever increasing data volumes being created
in multiple locations, regulatory and security concerns and a
requirement to exchange data with new communities of business
partners. Our industry research points to a growing need for this
kind of combination of open interconnection and
next-generation colocation that will reduce the complexity of
digital transformation," said Courtney
Munroe, Research Vice President, Worldwide Telecoms Research
for IDC.
"Our partnership with Digital Realty is a testament to our
shared vision to fundamentally transform the way businesses enable
IT services," said Vincent English,
CEO of Megaport. "Since the launch of Service Exchange in 2016,
Digital Realty and Megaport customers have unlocked the power of
on-demand interconnection to support hybrid cloud, multi cloud, and
cloud-to-cloud architectures that scale. We're excited to continue
innovating with Digital Realty as we make building connections
between enterprises, networks and clouds on PlatformDIGITAL® an
intuitive, as-a-service experience."
"We are laying out our industry manifesto and a call to action
today to remove legacy barriers in the interconnection industry to
address data gravity," said Chris
Sharp, Chief Technology Officer at Digital Realty. "We look
forward to engaging with industry participants as we shape our
vision for a fabric of fabrics that will unlock new opportunities
and value for all sectors. We will be an industry steward
championing this shift and together we can tackle data gravity
head-on and build a new era of open, secure and dynamic connected
data communities globally."
Supporting resources:
- Digital Realty's new industry manifesto: Enabling Connected
Data Communities
- Global reach: explore the PlatformDIGITAL® coverage map
- Discover interconnection options for global workflows with SX
Fabric and Cloud Connect
- Learn more about Digital Realty's Connectivity solutions
- Data Gravity explained: visit the insights hub
About Digital Realty
Digital Realty supports the
world's leading enterprises and service providers by delivering the
full spectrum of data center, colocation and interconnection
solutions. PlatformDIGITAL®, the company's global data center
platform, provides customers a trusted foundation and proven
Pervasive Datacenter Architecture (PDx™) solution methodology for
scaling digital business and efficiently managing data gravity
challenges. Digital Realty's global data center footprint gives
customers access to the connected communities that matter to them
with more than 290 facilities in 49 metros across 24 countries on
six continents. To learn more about Digital Realty, please visit
digitalrealty.com or follow us on LinkedIn and
Twitter.
Media & Industry Analyst Relations
Marc Musgrove
Digital Realty
+1 (415) 508-2812
mmusgrove@digitalrealty.com
Investor Relations
John
Stewart / Jim Huseby
Digital Realty
+1 (415) 738-6500
investorrelations@digitalrealty.com
This press release contains forward-looking statements which are
based on current expectations, forecasts and assumptions that
involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual outcomes
and results to differ materially, including statements related to
PlatformDIGITAL, including the updated roadmap, our industry
manifesto, data gravity, the Data Gravity Index, our partnership
with Megaport, Purepoint, and our global position in multi-tenant
datacenter capacity and interconnection solutions. For a list
and description of such risks and uncertainties, see the reports
and other filings by the company with the U.S. Securities and
Exchange Commission. The company disclaims any intention or
obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements,
whether as a result of new information, future events or
otherwise.
1 Synergy Research Group; Second largest carrier
neutral interconnection globally
2 451 Research, a part of S & P Global Market
Intelligence, Market Forecast, Leased Datacenter Global Providers,
2020. Capacity measured in terms of operational square footage.
3 27% MRR growth for Service Exchange in 2020. 46%
growth in customer interconnects on Cloud Connect platform in
2020.
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SOURCE Digital Realty