Extra tags: Data Centre
Authored by: Warren Aw, Epsilon, Managing Director, Asia Pacific
Over the past two years, we saw a sustained acceleration of innovation and digital transformation as organisations were navigating the effects of the global lockdown. With more offices adopting the “work from anywhere” model, there has been an increased need for agile work arrangements and thus a steady growth of cloud computing. According to Gartner, demand for cloud connectivity solutions increased by 23% in 2021.
For this year, Gartner projects worldwide IT spending to reach US$4.5 trillion, as companies prepare their infrastructure for the new hybrid work settings. The further advancing digitalisation will also change the connectivity landscape. At Epsilon, we believe that hybrid and multi-cloud will become one of the dominating trends. Enterprises are now using different cloud models, such as private cloud and various public cloud services for different functions in their business. They begin to understand that multiple clouds can improve uptime and they use it for backups and disaster recovery.
Multi-cloud models use two or more public cloud services and require connectivity between the cloud service providers (CSP). They give enterprises full control with the ability to seamlessly move between clouds. However, a multi-cloud networking strategy isn’t easy to implement on a single pane of glass. Cloud connectivity can be made simple with a service that delivers a multi-cloud network architecture with a common network data and operational control plane.
Demand for edge-based data centres
Related to that, we expect a larger need for edge-based data centres. Latency problems caused by older infrastructure, a growing data volume, and the resulting reduction in data processing speed are the principal reasons. In Southeast Asia, the data centre market by investment is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 8% between 2021 and 2026. The growing consumption of media and digital services are also driving the demand for increased speed and higher-capacity networking between data centres.
Companies in Southeast Asia continue to modernise their WAN infrastructure by upgrading to SD-WAN (Software-defined Wide Area Network). In doing so, they optimise costs, improve efficiency, and simplify their network management using a centralised orchestrator with automation. SD-WAN technology better suits the modern-day hybrid cloud setup, enabling enterprise IT teams to simplify their WAN infrastructure with greater visibility and control over data centres and cloud-hosted applications.
Together with SD-WAN solutions, cloud-based security and Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) are expected to gain traction. We will likely see more SMEs in this region taking this approach by integrating SD-WAN with network security, managing them on a single platform in a more agile and scalable way.
Why enterprises prefer fully managed SD-WAN
The transition to SD-WAN addresses the challenges of traditional WAN architecture and designs using multiprotocol label switching (MPLS).
MPLS is a decades-old network technology that is used to manage data speed and to control traffic flow between sites. Until 2010, MPLS worked well for large corporations. Applications were hosted locally and users worked in their fixed premises without moving around much. Business needs were manageable and didn’t create many challenges at the time.
While MPLS and SD-WAN can coexist, today’s enterprises need more versatile, scalable, and secure WAN solutions at a reasonable price and backed by service level. More businesses are choosing SD-WAN to optimise and continuously adapt their WAN to keep pace with the changing technology landscape.
2022 will be a year of continuous adoption for enterprises when it comes to enterprise cloud networking and accelerating the performance and security of their WAN.