Contributors
Introduction
Digital leaders have earned their position by accelerating their move to digital business models, recognising that 2023 will be the year that digital infrastructure takes center stage. It’s why IDC found that 80% of worldwide organisations believe that digital infrastructure is mission critical or important to enabling business goals. Digital leaders have been quick to operate effectively with digital infrastructure and this has given them a competitive advantage. When we break down how they’ve achieved this, we see they have taken every opportunity to digitalise services. They’ve not waited for a ‘big bang’ all-in transformation moment, choosing instead to evolve their infrastructure in increments, investing for maximum impact and they’re moving towards the security of agile, globally available digital infrastructure.
Digital leaders have an open and engaged approach to transformation and partnerships are at the heart of this. They see the right partnerships as a fast route to unlocking new capabilities and finding innovative ways to meet end users’ needs. By thinking holistically and focusing on building end-to-end, agile digital infrastructure, driven by partnerships, they reach further and achieve more. Partnerships are critical because no single player can deliver the entire digital infrastructure value chain. This underlines why ecosystem interoperability is important and emphasises how vital end-to-end ecosystem-based cross-platform user journeys are. Orchestration is the key to seamless, smooth, effective and secure user experience across platforms. This lifts the business to new heights by letting them focus on innovation. It’s critical that providers are easy to deal with, aligning all partners in the coalition to deliver a unified experience.
This eBook explores how digital leaders should approach digital infrastructure, examining what they need to look for in a solution and how they can identify the right supplier partnerships. It’s a guide for any business wanting to pull ahead from the competition. Do get in touch if you’d like to build end-to-end agile digital infrastructure that will set you up for success.
- André Quicheron, Strategic Datacentre Partnerships Director, Colt
- Martin Atkinson, Senior Manager of Peering and Interconnection EMEA, Equinix
- Krzysztof Stankiewicz, Principal Solutions Architect, Equinix
What do we mean by ‘digital infrastructure’?
At the very highest level, digital infrastructure is the foundation of any connected business, empowering them to operate, innovate, and meet customer needs.
Dig a little deeper and digital infrastructure breaks down into a platform with different capabilities sitting on it. The platform is the base plate, with functions like networks, compute, storage, applications and clouds connecting to it like building blocks clicking into place to build one structure. These blocks can be provided by different suppliers.
Once connected to the platform, you can consume these capabilities as individual services, or you can combine them in different ways to meet different business needs. For example, one configuration will support AI at the edge, and others will facilitate hybrid cloud, multi cloud, network functions virtualisation (NFV) and more.
It’s all about the connections. Effective digital infrastructure happens when these building blocks form interconnected ecosystems that deliver successful solutions.
Old world infrastructure vs new world digital infrastructure
Pre-digitalisation, changing or updating infrastructure was a slow and expensive process, involving installing hardware at physical sites. Then, if you wanted to change one component, it meant adapting other components that were managed by other partners and the burden of orchestration fell onto the internal team. It was an inflexible approach that was hard to adapt, and there was a real risk that the business’s needs would have outgrown the planned infrastructure by the time it was ready to go live. In contrast, the speed, flexibility and responsiveness of digital infrastructure stands out. An enterprise can identify a need and digital infrastructure can respond in near real-time, using automated orchestration and software defined networking to stand up seamlessly integrated capabilities quickly in a matter of clicks. Today’s digital infrastructure is agile, scalable and cost-effective – and the control lies with the business, rather than the infrastructure being a business inhibitor. What business doesn’t want an on-demand ‘cloud like’ infrastructure experience at its fingertips?
The checklist for building effective digital infrastructure
Digital leaders seize every opportunity to move towards agile digital infrastructure, recognising that taking incremental steps whenever possible is the fastest route to transformation. This approach leads to a series of mini projects, rather than one ‘big bang’ shift. Each project will be different, but certain core principles will always apply.
Here’s what to look for when building effective digital infrastructure.
#1 - Security woven into infrastructure design
Digital leaders champion digital infrastructure as a business enabler, but they know it must be paired with stringent security to protect from cyber threats – so they plan for this from the start. Building security in by design frees the business to make the most of digitalisation, knowing that every advance is protected. This is in stark contrast to old world security, where risk mitigation, governance and compliance were brakes on agile, just-in-time services.
A key part of digital infrastructure is being able to deliver security services wherever they are needed. For most organisations, this will be a mix of security in the cloud and deployment at network endpoints. Truly agile digital infrastructure will be able to support every defence the business wants, from DDoS mitigations and SASE services to on-demand firewall services and NFV.
#2 - A focus on privacy to reinforce security
Digital leaders in some sectors are adopting digital infrastructure that doesn’t expose mission-critical infrastructure to the internet at any point to maximise data security. Concerns about the fundamental security risks of public internet is driving businesses to turn to globally available digital infrastructure, but on a private basis. As a result, private cloud services and private connectivity are fundamental requirements for the most security-conscious.
#3 – Access to ecosystems
To drive innovation and pull ahead from their competition, digital leaders build out quickly from their digital core and integrate and deliver new services by tapping into business ecosystems via API-enabled collaboration. They focus on delivering the digital infrastructure they need in the right places for their business. Their goal is to build end-to-end agile digital infrastructure that supports a seamless experience across platforms. Businesses recognise ecosystems as a gateway giving rapid access to new SaaS offerings and an effective way of reducing the risk that comes with having only a single vendor in the supply chain.
They see ecosystems as the future of the supply chain, with seamless access to best-of-breed business and infrastructure capabilities directly from specialised partners with limitless choice and flexibility, delivered in convenient locations. Ecosystem density is the primary catalyst for speed; interconnected leaders have grown their digital infrastructure more in the last five quarters than in the last five years.
In fact, by 2026, 80% of G2000 companies will be digital leaders, interconnecting with 4+ hyperscale providers and 30+ SaaS/business partners.
#4 – Cost effective developments
Digitalisation is an outstanding opportunity to shift away from a CAPEX model that funds capital assets to an OPEX model via subscription services. Digital leaders make the most of OPEX financials to avoid paying for capacity lying idle. Moving away from on-premises infrastructure to dedicated cloud, for example, can unlock operational savings of 30-40%.
#5 – Easy in-life changes and rapid scaling
Speed of deployment is a crucial differentiator between traditional and digital infrastructures.
In the old world, deployment was often a business inhibitor due to the slow process of expanding infrastructure. Today, businesses want to test new markets quickly, and rollback if they want to, without the costs of moving their data back off the public cloud. They want the freedom to act swiftly, so they don’t lose competitive advantage.
Service flexibility is a key benefit of digital infrastructure, making it easy to expand or roll out new infrastructure or make rapid in-life changes.
Leading businesses want digital infrastructure that they can replicate swiftly with a ‘cookie cutter’ approach. The infrastructure provider has a key role in taking the technical complexity out of this process so the business can stand up new capability in near real-time.
#6 - Future proofed capabilities
Digital leaders build infrastructure that looks ahead to future demands and is pre-built for future capabilities. They expect to be able to put a function wherever it’s needed with all necessary connections without having to think about whether the move is possible or how the nuts and bolts of it work. This is a make-or-break capability for many, and digitally advanced businesses demand a catalogue approach to services where they can choose from capabilities and place them in exactly the right place for the business, knowing that they’re possible on future-proofed digital infrastructure.
#7 – The ability to outsource expertise
Leading businesses are rethinking their approach to expertise. Although they recognise it’s essential to have the in-house skills to introduce digital infrastructure, they are looking to partners to create the modular building blocks they use. Today, the focus is on cultivating expertise in sourcing and using digital infrastructure.
To look at it another way, businesses need the expertise to drive the car, but they don’t need to know how to build it. This approach also allows businesses to set their own balance between in-house expertise and outsourcing. They may choose to run certain building blocks internally, and leave management of others to partner organisations.
#8 – Strong agility, orchestration and visibility capabilities
Orchestration and visibility are essential to delivering seamless user experiences across interoperable ecosystems. The goal is to provide an end-to-end experience that doesn’t feel like it crosses multiple platforms.
It’s important to think ‘partnership first’ to build orchestration into digital infrastructure from the ground up. Digital businesses prioritise this, looking to build infrastructure partnerships that can deliver seamless experience. API orchestration is particularly important for creating a smooth, single offering by increasing automation, improving collaboration, simplifying innovation and enhancing security.
#9 – The ability to offer secure digital experiences at the edge
Digital leaders build digital infrastructure for the locations where they have the greatest digital engagement. This means they can offer secure experiences and make the most of real-time intelligence in proximity to where their business happens. With a smart edge, they can make informed decisions to take advantage of market developments, improve performance, and reduce costs. By keeping data processing local, the business doesn’t have to pay for upstream bandwidth to connect every transaction to the core.
Security, too, benefits from processing at the edge because if data stays local, it doesn’t travel across a network or the internet. A proximity approach also makes it easier to comply with complex data regulations, preventing data from traveling across and out of jurisdictions.
#10 – Agile connectivity with SD WAN
Digital leaders make sure connectivity is a strong part of digital infrastructure, recognising the importance of being able to connect platforms and ecosystems directly to sites, using fully automated real-time software defined network interconnections. SD-WAN is a key tool for achieving improved application performance, as well as increasing agility, visibility, and control of applications that span private data centres, SaaS, and clouds, and any remote or branch location across any WAN. It simplifies operations with automation and cloud-based management, providing a single pane of glass view for the entire network infrastructure now, and as cloud services continue to evolve.
Five tips on planning for digital infrastructure success
The fundamentals we’ve just covered create a clear picture of what makes successful digital infrastructure. The next step is to put that insight into action. To help you, we’ve combined the experiences of digital leaders with the expertise of our specialists into five pointers for businesses looking to build agile digital infrastructure.
1. Maximise your options
Your digital infrastructure is the launch pad for your business’s future – don’t limit your options by compromising your vision. Choose a consumption model that lets you right-size your infrastructure, avoiding huge upfront investment to create capacity as an insurance policy against future expansion needs. Flexibility is crucial. Be clear that you want agile infrastructure that can flex to meet your needs now, and can flex again as your business and end user requirements evolve. Flexible commercial terms will help you to avoid long-term contract lock-in, and a CAPEX, pay-per-use model will reduce costs.
In fact, limiting your options is likely to let extra costs creep in as you find your digital infrastructure can’t deliver essential functionality. Avoid this by setting investment decisions in the context of total cost and value of ownership, and make sure to consider these factors for all options.
2. Make the right choice of partners
Building effective digital infrastructure is all about aligning technology, compute, cloud, and connectivity to deliver a seamless end-to-end experience. This focus on alignment needs to extend to your choice of partners and delivering a shared future.
Make sure your partners share your ambitions and your values. You’ll be relying on them to deliver robust and fit-for-purpose intelligent infrastructure, so do they share your values of delivering end-user satisfaction and continuous improvement?
Put potential partners through their paces to test for fit. Be particularly wary of partners who claim to be offering modern digital infrastructure solutions that turn out to be a collection of disparate products and services, poorly stitched together without automation. Watch out for functionality that’s heavily reliant upon manual delivery and processes that result in time delays, human error, and a poor, inconsistent experience. Test their claims about their ecosystem of partners, too. Are they truly working in collaboration to deliver the end-to-end vision they promise, or are they working as supplier-to-supplier arrangements?
You’re launching a partnership that will need to thrive as technology and your requirements for it evolve. Do your partners have a strong track record of innovation? Are they technology leaders or followers? Will they be able to evolve together in ways that will keep pace with needs?
3. Protect your digital infrastructure
In an increasingly volatile cyber security landscape, it makes sense to reduce your attack surface as much as possible, especially as end connections move from MPLS to the more open internet. Businesses need to appreciate that users can be anywhere and the network perimeter of old no longer exists. Security should be designed in from the outset, with core infrastructure kept as secure as possible on private connections and designed to fit the security needs of the sector. Which is where visibility and analytics come in. Incorporating these capabilities will give you insight into what’s working and what’s not, and how you can make tweaks to improve functionality. They will help you identify as soon as your digital infrastructure is out of step with user or business needs and will give you control over the direction of development.
4. Prioritise simplicity
It can be easy to get caught up in the technical capabilities at the cost of the user experience. At every stage, consider the user journey and aim for ease and simplicity. Challenge your partnership team to reach new levels of user experience via, for example, incorporating easy-to-use portals or improving integration and flexibility with APIs.
5. Build in visibility and analytics
You’re building digital infrastructure that is very much ‘alive’ in the sense that it flexes and evolves to meet changing needs. It rarely stands still, so it’s important to always know its status-Which is where visibility and analytics come in. Incorporating these capabilities will give you insight into what’s working and what’s not, and how you can make tweaks to improve functionality. They will help you identify as soon as your digital infrastructure is out of step with user or business needs and will give you control over the direction of development.
Building end-to-end digital infrastructure
The Colt-Equinix partnership delivers agile digital infrastructure that will set your business up for success
Colt’s global and On Demand network combined with Equinix’s worldwide digital services and data centre footprint means, like digital leaders, you can build out quickly from your digital core and integrate and deliver new services by tapping into business ecosystems via API-driven collaboration.
Our video shows how easy it is to orchestrate your network across the Equinix Fabric and Colt On Demand platforms:
Colt On Demand Interconnect (ODI) has been designed in partnership between Colt and Equinix to allow companies using Equinix Digital Services to orchestrate connectivity to Colt’s extensive last mile, through a simplified end-to-end journey across both Equinix and Colt platforms.
Colt On Demand is Colt’s SDN-enabled network connectivity platform, which provides real time and flexible connectivity between data centre and enterprise locations, major cloud providers and the public internet. It delivers connections to 31,000+ enterprise buildings and 1,000+ data centres directly connected to the Colt fibre network, to provide a simplified end- to-end network experience.
Colt SD WAN enables the use, provisioning and orchestration of network services in real-time, according to need. Cloud-delivered SD WAN is easily deployed and flexes fast to let you meet new requirements and add new locations. It’s on-demand connectivity for an on-demand economy. The Colt SASE Gateway solution brings together the best of SD WAN and SSE and is the ideal solution to access cloud-based applications securely. It offers organisations multiple layers of protection from malware and threats, and instant visibility on security policies.
On-demand connectivity for an on-demand economy
Colt On Demand Interconnect (ODI) has been designed in partnership between Colt and Equinix to allow companies using Equinix Digital Services to orchestrate connectivity to Colt’s extensive last mile, through a simplified end-to-end journey across both Equinix and Colt platforms.
Colt On Demand is Colt’s SDN-enabled network connectivity platform, which provides real time and flexible connectivity between data centre and enterprise locations, major cloud providers and the public internet. It delivers connections to 31,000+ enterprise buildings and 1,000+ data centres directly connected to the Colt fibre network, to provide a simplified end- to-end network experience. Colt SD WAN enables the use, provisioning and orchestration of network services in real-time, according to need. Cloud-delivered SD WAN is easily deployed and flexes fast to let you meet new requirements and add new locations. It’s on-demand connectivity for an on-demand economy. The Colt SASE Gateway solution brings together the best of SD WAN and SSE and is the ideal solution to access cloud-based applications securely. It offers organisations multiple layers of protection from malware and threats, and instant visibility on security policies.
Equinix – delivering future- proof digital infrastructure
Equinix Fabric delivers on-demand access to the building blocks of digital infrastructure at software speed via secure, software- defined interconnection. The platform offers private access
to products and services delivered by Equinix customers and partners, making it easy to tap into rich ecosystems within a matter of minutes.
Equinix Network Edge provides on-demand virtual services that run on a modular infrastructure platform, optimised for deployment and interconnection of network services, while reducing complexity, cost and increasing ease of management. It’s a simple, highly customisable way to gain multi-vendor flexibility by stitching together virtual network services from different vendors into a single workflow.
Equinix Metal delivers on-demand, high performance bare metal that’s directly integrated with Equinix Fabric to deploy powerful infrastructure across global locations in minutes. It gives efficient and secure connection to the users, partners, clouds and networks that matter most to your business.
Digital infrastructure in action
Colt and Equinix partnership provides On Demand connectivity for investment management company.
The customer’s challenge
A leading global asset management company was looking for a secure solution for their Asia Pacific operation, enabling them to run a virtualised firewall in one of their key data centres.
Colt recognises that in certain sectors there is a greater need and requirement to adopt digital infrastructure that doesn’t expose mission-critical infrastructure to the internet at any point to maximise data security. Concerns about the fundamental security risks of public internet is driving businesses to turn to globally available digital infrastructure, on a private basis.
In this case, the asset management company didn’t have any physical colocation in Equinix and needed diverse and reliable private connectivity from their local Asia based office back to the Equinix platform – Fabric.
The solution
The Colt-Equinix partnership combined the Colt On Demand Interconnect service with the Equinix Network Edge Digital platform to create end-to-end connectivity and Secure Edge Services.
Colt On Demand provides dedicated connectivity that network managers can consume through an online portal, in an Opex model. This service is perfect for companies that require fast delivery, as well as to allow for future upgrades by a click on a button or via an API.
Colt is currently the only telecom provider with significant footprint in this region of Asia, capable of extending On Demand connectivity from Equinix Fabric to the last mile. The Customer was successfully onboarded onto both the Equinix Fabric and the Colt On Demand platforms, enabling a seamless secure private connectivity: the customer now has 2 x 200Mbps live circuits across both Colt On Demand and Equinix Fabric platforms, using the resilient interconnection in Asia between Colt IQNet and the Equinix Fabric.
The result
The Customer was fully satisfied with the solution, and has now opened negotiations for additional connections across both Colt & Equinix platforms. This business case demonstrates Colt’s deep understanding and ability to deliver a personalised sophisticated approach with its partners to support comparable institutions operating in the financial sector globally.
Start your journey
Your swift route to digital infrastructure that can deliver competitive advantage is ready. To find out how the Colt and Equinix partnership can support you, visit the Colt-Equinix partnership webpage.
