Joanna Styczen, Technical Writing Director, iMiller Public Relations
Today’s general consumer market is highly saturated. In 2015, no matter what it is that you want, you have the choice of virtually endless options. Traditionally, this free market’s competitiveness thrived on widgets and low price points. With the digital age is upon us, this is no longer the case.
Digital transformation is impacting everything we do, including how we make buying decisions. According to Kerravala, forward-thinking businesses that wish to remain competitive need to realize that consumer habits are changing, and success in today’s digital world is dependent on a company’s ability to engage with them. Today, it’s all about the online experience.
In his Network World article, “Expanding the Internet Edge is Critical to Supporting Digital Transformation,” author Zeus Kerravala explores this new phenomenon and what it means for our overworked network. After discussing the increased latency at peak Netflix and YouTube hours, Kerravala calls on us to imagine a world where every business streams video on their sites and the major impact it will have on content delivery speeds. The picture he paints is not pretty with our current architecture.
As more and more organizations attempt to modernize themselves, one of their preliminary steps is monetizing interactive online content. They become content companies, focused on pushing out videos, interactive programs, and other data on countless sites in order to drive consumer interaction. However, as everything becomes bandwidth-intensive content, the very networks that deliver it will be pushed to their limits, resulting in issues with unreliability and latency.
Today it’s not just about the fancy interface provided, but the speed and quality at which it is delivered that truly matters. To overcome these content delivery challenges, we need to expand the number of locations where content is processed and distributed. The edge of the Internet must expand through the introduction of additional facilities in more locations such as smaller Tier 1 and Tier 2 markets.
Data center providers such as EdgeConneX® are working diligently to make digital advancements such as this a reality. In order to combat content delivery latency and quality issues, EdgeConneX has developed Edge Data Centers® within multiple Tier 2 markets across the nation to create a new Edge of the Internet. This expansion enables the shortest and fastest routes for content delivery to where it’s needed, not just within major cities and markets.
