It’s Not Just Data Centers: Networks Are Critical Infrastructure, Too

Data centers have become just as essential to society as water treatment facilities and power plants. It's gratifying to see that governments around the world not only recognize this fact, but that they're acting upon it, as the UK did when it designated data centers as critical national infrastructure.[1]

It's important to recognize that data centers are only one piece of the digital infrastructure equation, and they don't operate as data islands. Our digital world is inherently interconnected, and many of the applications we rely on don't run out of a single data center. They require many distributed data centers at the digital edge, in proximity to data sources and end users, and those data centers must be connected to one another.

Investing in individual data centers is important, but it's not enough. We also need resilient network infrastructure to enable our connected society. This network infrastructure is just as critical as the data centers themselves, because without it, we wouldn't be able to use those data centers to their full potential.

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Data centers can enable the Intelligent Age, but not without connectivity

We are living in the dawn of a new era: the Intelligent Age, defined by digital technology and its massive impact on society. To better understand this shift, we can look back at a similar period in history: the Industrial Revolution.

The Industrial Revolution was defined by the emergence of new factories that led to skyrocketing productivity, but the factories alone weren't enough. Manufacturers needed a global shipping network to get raw materials to the factories and finished products to marketplaces. Otherwise, they'd end up with idle factories on one continent and overflowing warehouses on another.

Today's data centers play a similar role to factories in the Industrial Revolution. Just like those factories, data centers wouldn't be able to function without a steady stream of raw materials-in this case, data-flowing into them. Instead of ships and ports, they depend on global network infrastructure to transfer data from a wide variety of sources, including end users, Internet of Things (IoT) devices and other data centers.

High-performance data centers are connected data centers

Global network connectivity is part of what defines a true high-performance data center. In contrast, legacy on-premises data centers are often isolated. These conventional data centers were built for a different time, long before the emergence of data-intensive applications like AI. Businesses that continue to rely on them may find it difficult to reach ecosystem partners like cloud and network service providers. They'll be stuck trying to fend for themselves in a complex and always-changing digital world.

High-performance colocation data centers offer access to ecosystem services that make life easier, whether it's the flexibility and scalability of multicloud infrastructure or the global reach and reliability of a deep portfolio of network service providers. These data centers also offer scalable, private interconnection services, enabling enterprises to easily connect with their ecosystem partners and move their data wherever it needs to go.

Many enterprises are also dealing with the challenge of emerging data sovereignty requirements. They've got datasets that must remain in their country of origin, so they need data centers in those countries. The traditional hub-and-spoke model of digital infrastructure, where all data is aggregated into data centers in a few core locations, doesn't work in this new reality. Instead, enterprises need many data centers in many locations, all connected with one another. This provides flexibility to store certain datasets within certain borders, while moving other datasets freely throughout the world.

AI adoption underscores the importance of distributed digital infrastructure

The need for distributed data centers is nothing new, but the emergence of advanced AI use cases in the last few years has underscored that need.

AI applications are highly distributed by nature. AI training workloads and AI inference workloads have different infrastructure requirements, and are thus best supported by different data centers in different locations. These different data centers depend on robust network infrastructure to ensure a free flow of data between the processing locations.

Most IT leaders don't have to think about AI training infrastructure on a regular basis, particularly since many enterprises acquire models from a service provider instead of training their own. However, deploying edge infrastructure for AI inference is a requirement for any business that wants to succeed with AI.

This inference isn't a one-off process, either: Since new data is always emerging, it needs to be performed consistently over time. This always-on AI inference requires network infrastructure that just works, when and how it's supposed to. Thus, enterprises need access to reliable, resilient network infrastructure on a global scale to support their AI initiatives.

Access a global interconnection platform today

The idea of networks as critical infrastructure is nothing new to us at Equinix. We've consistently made investments to ensure we can provide our customers with the reliable connectivity they need to thrive in a changing digital world.

Our dedicated interconnection solutions allow customers to bypass the public internet, with its inherent performance and privacy issues. Instead, they can opt for a hybrid networking model that incorporates both physical Equinix Cross Connects and virtual networking with Equinix Fabric®. This helps them balance their needs around performance, security, cost-efficiency and flexibility.

Whether you're looking to meet data sovereignty requirements or support latency-sensitive workloads like AI inference, our global platform of Equinix IBX® colocation data centers can help. You can deploy in any of 74 major metros around the world to ensure your data can reach the places it needs to reach without delay. From any of those metros, you'll be able to access our interconnection solutions and our robust ecosystem of thousands of partners and service providers.

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In addition to enabling global connectivity, high-performance data centers can help enterprises tackle some of the biggest challenges they face today, including ensuring optimized performance, meeting sustainability and compliance requirements, and deploying AI-ready infrastructure globally. Learn more about how high-performance data centers are helping enterprises future-proof their operations: Visit us today.

[1] Data centres to be given massive boost and protections from cyber criminals and IT blackouts, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, September 12, 2024.