The Global Interconnection Index (GXI), an annual market study published by Equinix, shows that the COVID-19 pandemic is having a significant effect on how companies implement their digital infrastructure initiatives over the next three years. In the fourth annual edition it's stated that digital service providers will increase the bandwidth of private connections five times by 2023. This applies to sectors such as telecommunications, cloud & IT services, content & digital media and technology providers and can be explained by the increasing need for IT facilities at the digital edge.
The pandemic will continue to accelerate the digital transformation. As a result, organizations where telecommuting is facilitated, such as telecommunications, cloud and IT providers, are expected to contribute to 54% of the total bandwidth growth in EMEA. In doing so, they will outpace other industries in the region. Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris and London will be the top metros in Europe for bandwidth growth, with the region as a whole projected to account for 23% (3,782 Terabits per second) of the projected global bandwidth.
The report also predicts that the total interconnection bandwidth (the measure of direct connections when exchanging data between organizations) in EMEA will reach a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 45% between 2019 and 2023.
Amsterdam top growth market
Amsterdam is expected to be a top growth market for this connectivity as interconnection bandwidth will exceed the wider EMEA region at a CAGR of 48%, up to 611 Tbps. This anticipated growth is driven by digital transformation, and in particular, increased demand from organizations expanding their digital infrastructure from centralized locations to distributed edge locations. The reason is the scaling up of organizations as well as the support of real-time interactions between people, things, locations, cloud and data. The capacity of this connection is equal to 64 zettabytes of data exchange; which is enough bandwidth to send their complete DNA data from every person on Earth (7.8 billion) in an hour.”
Eugene Bergen Hainaut, Chairman, EMEA, Equinix: “The COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated the digital transformation journey that businesses across the region have already been undergoing. It is now even more important for companies to find innovative ways to connect with their customers and partners to gain a competitive advantage at a distance.
