OREANDA-NEWS. December 11, 2015. Looking ahead to 2016, it’s clear that businesses will continue to raise expectations for increased network capacity, improved cyber-security and better cost efficiency. But most pressingly, the demand for a new breed of connectivity will escalate rapidly as companies accelerate towards 2017, the year by which 84 percent of all companies worldwide say they will be interconnected enterprises. This isn’t yesterday’s connectivity – this is state-of-the-art interconnection. Some of the most interesting things to watch in 2016 will be how companies get creative about obtaining it.

In the second of two posts on our 2016 predictions, we take a closer look at how the rising enterprise appetite for interconnection will affect enterprise connectivity strategies everywhere. 

Make my connections direct: Content providers will increasingly bypass the Internet to meet surging network bandwidth demand.

If you’re looking for evidence of the rapidly increasing requirements for network bandwidth on the horizon, take a look at the Cisco Visual Networking Index, which sees video streaming services such as YouTube and Netflix making up 76% of consumer Internet traffic by 2018. The challenges this massive demand for network bandwidth poses to digital content and network providers are exacerbated by an accompanying shift in consumer-focused, bandwidth-hungry technologies, such as Super HD and high dynamic range streaming technologies. Digital content providers can reduce those bandwidth demands by shifting content to the cloud and optimizing Internet application performance. But in 2016, they will also increasingly build internal content delivery networks with direct connections that circumvent Internet congestion and deliver content to users more effectively and efficiently.

Make my cloud connections multiple: Enterprises will continue to shift to multi-cloud for cost savings.

Multi-cloud interconnection strategies are proving especially compelling when it comes to driving IT cost-efficiency, and in 2016, more enterprises will embrace these strategies. A recent Forrester study, “The Total Economic Impact of Equinix Interconnection Solutions,” showed enterprise adoption of certain multi-cloud interconnection strategies saved more than \\$1 million over three years. As more enterprises recognize the cost advantages on the table, we will see them shift away from housing critical applications on-premises and deploy and scale those applications with lower-cost cloud service providers.

Make my connections secure: Cyber-security will fuel increased interconnection adoption.

Security in the cloud remains a major worry for enterprises – it was one of the biggest concerns identified by enterprise IT leaders in the recent Equinix “Enterprise of the Future” report. And enterprises are also realizing that using the public Internet as an on-ramp to cloud services can create significant security vulnerabilities. That’s why more enterprises will rethink their IT infrastructure approach in 2016 and seek out direct and secure interconnection to other organizations and the cloud. No connection is as safe as a private connection, and the ability to bypass the public Internet and its various security concerns will have a huge and widening appeal.

We at the Interconnections blog wish our readers a secure and prosperous 2016. For more information on how interconnection can help make it that way, visit the Equinix website.