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Simplify Your Hybrid Infrastructure Strategy With Cloud Exchanges How Colocation And Interconnection Partners Can Help Support Your Multicloud Future by Sophia I. Vargas and Andre Kindness February 17, 2016 FOR INFRASTRUCTURE & OPERATIONS PROFESSIONALS FORRESTER.COM Key Takeaways Providers And Partners Are Making It Easier To Connect Your Network To Others Connecting your network to others is easier because the providers in this new market do much of the hard work for you, allowing you to capitalize on this simplicity with self-service, application programming interfaces, and rich feedback so you can adapt quickly and steal customers from your competitors. Cloud Service Marketplaces Streamline Business Decisions And Fuel New Economics When providers can compete on a level playing field, customers win. You -- the customer -- get cheaper services that are actually superior. The result can be good for you, but the economics may disrupt the status quo. Colocation Services Are The Battlefields Of This New Cloud Service Ecosystem Telecom carriers, cloud partners, and others are fighting for your business. The best colocation providers are leading the way, forcing others to either emulate them or partner with them. Why Read This Report As the cloud market matures, more critical business applications will continue to move into cloud environments. In this increasingly hybrid environment, infrastructure and operations (I&O) professionals need to ensure performance no matter where services are located. Performance of the network is key to ensuring the quality of these services. This report helps I&O professionals compare current and emerging models around private, dedicated connections into cloud environments and how these variations will impact BT agenda decisions going forward.

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Simplify Your Hybrid Infrastructure Strategy With Cloud ExchangesHow Colocation And Interconnection Partners Can Help Support Your Multicloud Future

by Sophia I. Vargas and Andre KindnessFebruary 17, 2016

FOR INFRASTRUCTURE & OPERATIONS PROFESSIONALS

FORRESTER.COM

Key TakeawaysProviders And Partners Are Making It Easier To Connect Your Network To OthersConnecting your network to others is easier because the providers in this new market do much of the hard work for you, allowing you to capitalize on this simplicity with self-service, application programming interfaces, and rich feedback so you can adapt quickly and steal customers from your competitors.

Cloud Service Marketplaces Streamline Business Decisions And Fuel New EconomicsWhen providers can compete on a level playing field, customers win. You -- the customer -- get cheaper services that are actually superior. The result can be good for you, but the economics may disrupt the status quo.

Colocation Services Are The Battlefields Of This New Cloud Service EcosystemTelecom carriers, cloud partners, and others are fighting for your business. The best colocation providers are leading the way, forcing others to either emulate them or partner with them.

Why Read This ReportAs the cloud market matures, more critical business applications will continue to move into cloud environments. In this increasingly hybrid environment, infrastructure and operations (I&O) professionals need to ensure performance no matter where services are located. Performance of the network is key to ensuring the quality of these services. This report helps I&O professionals compare current and emerging models around private, dedicated connections into cloud environments and how these variations will impact BT agenda decisions going forward.

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© 2016 Forrester Research, Inc. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester®, Technographics®, Forrester Wave, RoleView, TechRadar, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. [email protected] or +1 866-367-7378

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Table Of Contents

In A Hybrid World, The Data Center Has No Center — It’s A Network

For Some Workloads, The Internet Is Not Good Enough

Cloud Connect Services Expand And Diversify

Cloud Exchanges Are Positioned To Support Multi-Cloud Ambitions

Connected Communities Are A Win-Win For Customers And Partners

Recommendations

Let Business Outcomes Drive Your Interconnection Strategy

What It Means

Evolving Economics Blur Public And Private Network Boundaries

Supplemental Material

Notes & Resources

Forrester spoke with cloud, colocation, network, and interconnection providers, as well as customers using these services, in the formation of this research.

Related Research Documents

Brief: Service Marketplaces Create A Hub For Your Hybrid Ecosystem

Embrace The Hybrid Technology Ecosystem For Service Design

Vendor Landscape: Colocation And Data Center Services

FOR INFRASTRUCTURE & OPERATIONS PROFESSIONALS

Simplify Your Hybrid Infrastructure Strategy With Cloud ExchangesHow Colocation And Interconnection Partners Can Help Support Your Multicloud Future

by Sophia I. Vargas and Andre Kindnesswith Glenn O’Donnell and Andrew Hewitt

February 17, 2016

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In A Hybrid World, The Data Center Has No Center — It’s A Network

The data center fueled business through the Internet revolution. As we transition into the age of the customer, the data center has undergone a dramatic change. Your technology agenda to win, serve, and retain customers demands a more flexible, more distributed architecture, and you — the I&O professional — must lead this transformation. For most organizations today, the data center has already extended beyond traditional owned infrastructure to include a collection of assets across owned, colocated, managed, and cloud environments.1 As the business continues to invest in systems of engagement to provide compelling experiences for its customers, your infrastructure resources will become more distributed to support your globally dispersed customer base.2

The Network Is The Computer — More Than Ever

Sun Microsystems trademarked the phrase “The network is the computer” in the early 1990s, and it quickly caught on as Sun powered the Internet wave.3 Your distributed digital business architecture relies on more network infrastructure than ever — and much of it is out of your direct control. More services stretch across heterogeneous resources in multiple locations. Not only will your WAN network traffic greatly expand but service quality will increasingly depend on the quality of connections between components of the service.4 As data center architectures move away from centralized compute farms toward interconnected meshes of hot, cold, owned, and managed resources, infrastructure decision-makers increasingly look to locate new data center assets in carrier-dense locations (see Figure 1).5 Basically, I&O professionals want a cross-connect platform that delivers architecture at scale.6

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FIGURE 1 Infrastructure Decision-Makers Are Concerned About Latency

Note: Not all responses shown.Source: Forrester’s Global Business Technographics® Infrastructure Survey, 2015

Network connectivity options/carrieravailability/carrier density

Site risk pro�le

Location of the data center facilitywhere your data is stored

Legal or compliance regulations

Access to cloud, managed servicesproviders, or other partners

81%

80%

74%

78%

70%

Base: 852 global infrastructure decision-makers whose �rms prioritize servers and the data center(1,000+ employees)

“How important are the following when choosing a data center facility?”(4 or 5 on a scale from 1 [not at all important] to 5 [very important])

Public Cloud Providers Demonstrate Architecture At Scale

Cloud providers and colocation companies have created collections of infrastructure resources that behave like one dynamic asset with the network as the linchpin. Colocation providers engineer redundant infrastructure, power, and network connections to increase availability, while hyperscale cloud providers achieve high availability via dynamic flexibility across multiple assets in distinct risk zones. For example, Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) Northern Virginia region includes five availability zones. Each zone is separated by about 1 to 2 milliseconds (about 125 to 250 miles) — enough distance to diversify risk but close enough to support high-availability application architectures. While each zone consists of one or more complete data centers, each supporting 25 MW to 35 MW and 50,000 to 80,000 servers, from the customer’s perspective, these behave as one data center.

For Some Workloads, The Internet Is Not Good Enough

While an Internet connection might be fine for many SaaS and mobile applications, most data center traffic that leverages 10 GbE, 40 GbE, or 100 GbE connections between servers will screech to a halt once this same traffic tries to traverse the Internet. The idea that “the Internet is good enough” isn’t good enough for businesses based on three recent trends: 1) Since 2013, cloud providers have been scrambling

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How Colocation And Interconnection Partners Can Help Support Your Multicloud Future

to offer better connectivity methods — such as AWS Direct Connect, Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute, and SoftLayer Direct Link — for their clients; 2) even between cloud provider sites, Amazon, Google, and Facebook have or are rolling out their own fiber and networks; and 3) a whole new market of colocation services, managed services, and new carrier cloud WAN services has emerged to support this requirement.7 As outlined in Forrester’s “Beware The Pitfalls Within Networking For Hybrid Cloud” report, business-critical applications that require more than the Internet’s best-effort approach need:

› Consistent performance. Some of the traffic needs a certain amount of bandwidth, requires first rights to resource-buffers and queues, traverses the network in the shortest amount of time, and needs to send the payloads in a certain order. Dedicated connections, quality-of-service capabilities, and bandwidth guarantees protect the traffic from congestion and noisy neighbors.8

› A basic set of thresholds/guarantees. Most providers offer uptime service-level agreements (SLAs) of 99.9% availability and above to ensure a reliable and consistent connection.9 This helps I&O organizations know what they are working with at minimum so they can add or subtract guarantees based on the needs of the applications, services, or business requirements.

› Complementary security and network services. Running all applications through a VPN connection — a single tunnel — can be a security hole.10 These single tunnels hide indicators the network needs to optimize the traffic. I&O pros should interweave network and security components to enable per-application traffic controls and policies with Zero Trust architecture built around the applications and data.

› A WAN fabric. As highlighted in Forrester’s “Three Forcing Functions That Will Extend Your Data Center’s Network Services Beyond Its Walls” report, the network will become a large network fabric. If these fabric connections can be established through a cross-connect location, this will eliminate the complexity and costs of trying to do this yourself between carriers and cloud providers.11 Additionally, data transfer fees for private dedicated connections from providers like AWS are lower compared with public Internet connections.12

Cloud Connect Services Expand And Diversify

Alongside the impressive growth in cloud services, dedicated cloud connections are becoming more prevalent and available. Most of the leading cloud providers have launched products to enable these kinds of connections. Within this product category, delivery mechanisms come in a few distinct flavors, as there are a variety of transport technologies and routing options that could sit below this service (see Figure 2). While each provides the same outcome — a private, dedicated connection that bypasses the public Internet — the nuance of the underlying architecture will impact the management, flexibility, and cost characteristics of this service (see Figure 3 and see Figure 4).13 At the simplest interpretation, your dedicated cloud connection options include:

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› One-to-one. This is typically an Ethernet cross-connect or leased private line connecting your infrastructure in an owned or colocated facility into a cloud provider’s edge. Deployment time and flexibility will depend on whether the provider lays a new connection or provisions capacity over an existing connection. Pricing is typically a monthly fee per cross-connect if located in a colocation provider or speed variable (cost per Mbps) for longer fiber routes.

› One-to-many. This refers to a cloud exchange model. Similar to Internet exchanges, cloud exchanges provide MeetMe platforms to enable connections to multiple clouds. Customers purchase a port into the cloud exchange and dynamically provision virtual cross-connects into any cloud provider connected to that exchange. Pricing is broken out as a fee per port plus monthly recurring costs for each virtual cross-connect.

› Any-to-any. This refers to an IP VPN/MPLS connection that will add a cloud node to a customer’s WAN, thus providing cloud access from any office or data center on the WAN. It can include multiple cloud nodes. This type of connection can help alleviate the bottleneck associated with funneling all of your cloud traffic through one facility. On the back end, these connections may be routed through peering points or cloud exchanges. These services are typically provided by carrier providers, and thus are subject to carrier rates.

FIGURE 2 Interconnection Methods

Customer Cloud edge

One-to-one

Customer Cloud edgesexchange

One-to-many

CustomerWAN

Any-to-any

Over carriernetwork

Cloud edges

Cross-connect intocloud exchange +

virtual cross-connectinside exchange

Within colocationfacility

Private line/MPLSto cloud edge

Ethernet cross-connect

Private line/MPLSinto cloud exchange +virtual cross-connect

inside exchange

IP VPN/MPLSbetween customer

WAN and cloud edge

Cloud

N/A

Delivery partner characteristics

Customer

Dedicated cloud connection types

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FIGURE 3 Pricing Categories And Rates

Provider

Carrier

Colocation

Cloud

Cloud serviceprovider port

Port into cloud networkedge

$0

$0.02-$0.14per GB

$55-$5000per Mbps per

month

Unlimited

Unlimited

50 Mbps-10 Gbps

Data transfer charges outof CSP

Data transfer chargesinto CSP

Data ingress

Data egress

Cross-connectTypically Ethernet within

a colocation facilityor campus

$250-$350per link per

month1 Gbps-10 Gbps

Virtual cross-connect

VLAN over Ethernetwithin a cloud exchange

$100-$200per link per

month200 Mbps-1 Gbps

Cloudexchange port

Port into cloud exchange$100-$200

per portper month

1 Gbps-10 Gbps

Networktransport

Options for IP VPN,MPLS, VPLS, Ethernet

$300-$600per Mbpsper month

50 Mbps-10 Gbps

Cost category Category details Cost range Size range

Note: Pricing accurate as of December 2015

Cross-connect,port or other

Additional charges vary by transport methodology,connection size, usage, and additional services

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Partner Offerings Are Skewed To Their Own Core Competencies

Most cloud providers do not directly sell proprietary network services and thus rely on partners to deliver this class of connection. Typically providers will expose edge locations or peering points in key markets. Partners can then lay new connections or provision capacity over their existing network to provide dedicated cloud connectivity to customer environments in colocation or owned facilities. New connections can be initiated from either the cloud provider console or via the connection partner. These services are provided by a variety of partners, each characterized by the provider’s primary service offering:

› Carriers provide transport to and from cloud providers. This category includes telecommunications, bandwidth, and wholesale carrier providers. Sample solutions include AT&T NetBond and Verizon Secure Cloud Interconnect. Typically these connections are provisioned over existing fiber footprints. Dark fiber connections to your infrastructure can be provisioned as needed, including point-to-point MPLS connections. Most can be extended to multiple offices or clouds depending on the network and cloud provider’s footprint. Many of these offerings include managed network, security, and WAN services as an added feature.

› Colocation facilities host communities of carriers and cloud providers. The vast majority of colocation providers offer cross-connect services to connect customers and carriers. Standard practice increasingly offers cross-connects into cloud providers with edge nodes present in that facility. In facilities not containing cloud edges, connections require cross-connections into carrier partners like Zayo and Level 3 Communications that can complete the circuit. Even providers with

FIGURE 4 Cloud Provider Connection Costs

Amazon Web Services(AWS)

Microsoft Azure

Google CloudPlatform

IBM SoftLayer

CarrierInterconnect

Direct Link

$0$0.04-$0.06

per GB

$010-50 TB included

in base fee

ExpressRoute

$55-$5,000 per month;$300-$51,300 per

month for unlimiteddata transfer

$1,500-$5,000per month; $400per month withincloud exchange

$0

$0

$0.025-$0.14per GB; noadditional

cost for unlimited

Direct Connect$0.03-$2.25 perhour ($22-$1,700

per month)

$0 for wire; $200for 50 TB

appliance basedbulk upload

$0.02-$0.11per GB

Product name Port costs Data ingress Data egress

Note: Pricing accurate as of December 2015. Circuit redundancy and regional restrictions vary by baseoffering.

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proprietary infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) services like CenturyLink and Interoute also offer cross-connects into hyperscale cloud providers. Market leaders like Equinix and CoreSite have launched cloud exchange platforms in addition to individual cross-connects.

› Managed service providers help manage the complexity. Like the carrier model, managed network services vendors like CFN Services and Masergy provision private connections over their own existing network and ports into cloud providers or cloud exchanges, managing isolation through virtual private connections. As your data center and network architectures become more complex, support from managed service providers can help alleviate challenges associated with management, orchestration, and security.

› Software-defined solutions open the curtain to control and visibility. Interconnection providers like IIX and Megaport have implemented software-focused solutions to provide a management console over this process, enabling customers to dynamically scale up and back as needed by automating connectivity provisioning and configurations over partner and propriety networks. Cost structures echo the transport technology included in the underlying circuit. These providers are present in prominent exchange hubs, many within colocation facilities like Equinix, CoreSite, and Telx.

Colocation Will Bring Your Infrastructure Closer To Cloud Edges

For organizations not colocated in the same facility as their cloud provider, chances are high that these dedicated connections will likely be routed through carrier partners or nearby cloud exchange hubs. Many of these exist within colocation facilities (see Figure 5). As the predominant use cases requiring private, dedicated connections are dependent upon latency, organizations seeking to build hybrid applications should consider locating infrastructure in colocation facilities to be close to cloud nodes or carrier-dense peering points.

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FIGURE 5 Colocation, Carrier Exchanges, And Cloud Nodes Expand Your Data Footprint

Cloud locations

Note: The size of the bubble indicates the number of colocation vendors in that city.

North America5-1

Internet exchange location

1-5 colo vendors6-15 colo vendors

Above 15 colo vendors

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FIGURE 5 Colocation, Carrier Exchanges, And Cloud Nodes Expand Your Data Footprint (Cont.)

South America5-2

Cloud locationsInternet exchange location

1-5 colo vendors6-15 colo vendors

Above 15 colo vendors

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FIGURE 5 Colocation, Carrier Exchanges, And Cloud Nodes Expand Your Data Footprint (Cont.)

Europe5-3

Cloud locationsInternet exchange location

1-5 colo vendors6-15 colo vendors

Above 15 colo vendors

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FIGURE 5 Colocation, Carrier Exchanges, And Cloud Nodes Expand Your Data Footprint (Cont.)

Asia Paci�c5-4

Cloud locationsInternet exchange location

1-5 colo vendors6-15 colo vendors

Above 15 colo vendors

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Cloud Exchanges Are Positioned To Support Multi-Cloud Ambitions

Like Internet exchanges, the key benefit of cloud exchanges comes from the quantity and variety of service providers available. As many organizations now use services from multiple cloud providers — most using hybrid combinations of SaaS applications, services built on PaaS solutions, or IaaS resources — cloud exchanges present a compelling model to dynamically connect multiple clouds without the complexity, expense, and delay of provisioning multiple physical connections.14

Cloud Exchanges Leverage The Agility Of Cloud Services

Equinix piloted the concept of the service marketplace — a virtual marketplace designed to showcase available partner services at each location.15 Cloud exchanges as a concept are similar to service marketplaces in that they showcase a community of available services available for cross-connects all under the same virtual roof. What makes cloud exchanges unique is the ability to leverage the flexibility, speed, and empowerment benefits of cloud services. Managed services contracts may require customization per organization, but cloud services can be provisioned and scaled up or down in a matter of minutes due to the standardized, self-service, pay-per-use nature of cloud services. Additionally, Equinix and CoreSite provide APIs around their cloud exchanges to enable dynamic controls from other platforms.

Connected Communities Are A Win-Win For Customers And Partners

For most organizations, cloud usage will only increase. In 2015, 26% of enterprise infrastructure decision-makers in North America and Europe had implemented public cloud services, and another 14% are planning to implement cloud services in the next 12 months.16 For most colocation providers, cross-connect services are limited to carriers and prominent IaaS providers — namely AWS, Azure, Google, and SoftLayer. However, most enterprise cloud adoption and usage has focused on supplementing or replacing applications with SaaS alternatives.17 Cloud exchanges have widened cross-connection services into a variety of cloud service providers across IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS solutions providing storage, security, disaster recovery services, and more. CoreSite showcases upward of 22 providers, while Equinix exchanges have access to more than 50 providers. Having multiple partners in one low-latency community creates more opportunities for customers and providers alike to control traffic costs, simplify integrations, and make the most of dynamic network provisioning.18 Looking forward, cloud exchanges have the potential to:

› Provide compelling economics for multiple private, dedicated connections. Through various engagements, Forrester clients have indicated WAN costs as one of the larger reoccurring networking costs they would like to trim and one reason straight-to-Internet has been an attractive option. Once a customer has access to a cloud exchange, connecting to additional clouds within the same exchange will always be cheaper than any of the other dedicated solutions, thus enabling economies of scale with private networking costs. As these connected communities mature, more connections and partnerships between service providers will only increase pricing options for customers. Competition will drive costs down.

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› Simplify cloud-to-cloud integrations. Connected communities not only make it easy for customers to connect to many partners, but also for partners to connect to each other. They can leverage each other’s platforms and services and enable out-of-the-box integrations for common customers. Many solution providers now use app stores to showcase prebuilt integrations to complementary solutions.19 If the cloud exchange model continues to move toward a service marketplace, cloud exchanges will become another avenue to showcase out-of-the-box integrations, as well as provide access to integration-as-a-service providers. Given that the most common form of application integration is data import/export, use cases that require frequent, high-volume data transfers between applications will benefit from these low-latency dedicated connections.

› Support cloud broker platforms and ecosystems. As vendors recognize that most organizations are using multiple cloud services, more providers are starting to offer variations on cloud brokering solutions — designed to compare costs, manage supply, and aggregate demand of cloud services across multiple platforms.20 While current interoperability challenges limit portability between cloud providers, the flexibility of cloud exchanges to dynamically provision private connectivity to multiple providers via API calls could provide a convenient complement to cloud brokering platforms. Hybrid cloud management software solutions now commonly include such brokering capabilities, and we expect these to improve dramatically.21

Recommendations

Let Business Outcomes Drive Your Interconnection Strategy

As enterprise data centers continue to extend into multiple types of environments, managing integrations and orchestrating resources across multiple environments is only going to get more complex. While dedicated connectivity options could simplify network management, for organizations that are not adjacent to their cloud platform or a cloud exchange, public connections will most likely be cheaper. Thus organizations will need to justify the additional costs of private connections with specific use cases and business outcomes. Due to the latency sensitivity of the workloads driving the need for private connections, organizations should evaluate partners based on peering location, required bandwidth, and accessibility of additional resources. In general, I&O professionals should:

› Account for the limitations of each provider and service. Across cloud providers, slight nuances exist in implementing private connections when it comes to automating network tasks, spinning up and down network services and controls, available managed services, access to additional regions, SLAs, the number of circuits included per subscription, and where the redundancy exists within the circuit. Evaluate solutions based on the characteristics of the workloads in question, recognizing the usage limitations of these services as well as the latency sensitivity. For example, a single connection provides low-latency access to cloud in one region that may only be one of many locations containing your infrastructure.

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› Identify a partner that can work with your existing network portfolio. Most customers look to extend contracts and relationships with carrier providers — or leverage favorable cross-connects adjacent to existing infrastructure — rather than work with a new provider. As organizations continue to evaluate opportunities to outsource commodity services and use internal employees more strategically, organizations should consider interconnection partners that can support these requirements.

› Follow the development of cloud exchanges and connected communities. The concepts and defined solutions of cloud exchanges, service marketplaces, service app stores, and brokerage platforms will continue to evolve. These services may provide the platforms that will help you simplify orchestration and management across a hybrid and heterogeneous ecosystem.

What It Means

Evolving Economics Blur Public And Private Network Boundaries

Cloud adoption is straining the definition of the enterprise network. Rather than a tightly controlled, fully private network, you face more complex multisourcing and management issues. These will soon overwhelm the I&O organization if it doesn’t properly prepare. The most dramatic changes are in the economics, which will be alien to most longtime I&O professionals and finance executives. Developments that will prove strange but very beneficial include:

› Network borders will become difficult to identify. Given that the proportion of owned infrastructure continues to shrink, organizations will continue to balance traffic between public and private networks for extreme flexibility and improved cost management. As more providers open up access to proprietary network edges, more customers can leverage cloud interconnections to extend geographic reach via a provider’s footprint. If these extensions are provisioned over a proprietary connection, the customer has effectively extended the reach of their private network. The demarcation between your private networks and your partners’ private networks will begin to disappear. With virtual network infrastructure, boundaries are transparent anyway.

› The new network will become a powerful competitive weapon. The flexibility you gain from a cloud exchange lets you make business decisions quickly and then act on them at cloud speed. While your competitors are wrestling with outdated sourcing models, you can be serving your customers with faster, more capable business services — leaving your competition defeated and likely falling further behind. The network matters more than ever. No longer just a commodity, it has become the fabric of your digital business.

› Networks will get cheaper and better. As the variety of connections increase, anticipate that the economics of these connections will continue to evolve and challenge traditional pricing structures and integration capabilities. Competition in the exchanges will naturally lead to cheaper connectivity options and more features. Telecommunications carriers that depend on the decades-old model of network connectivity will feel the most pain as they are forced to adapt to this nimble new cloud-like model.

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› Opex economics will become more prominent. Much of the infrastructure expense in traditional companies is capital expense — absorbed as a lump sum and amortized over time. New cloud economics, now being applied to the network, changes enough of this capex to opex. Opex is a challenge to many firms because expenses come in regular intervals — like monthly billing — and vary based on usage. This is a far better model, but one that requires a painful shift in thinking across all levels of the enterprise — and especially the CFO.

Supplemental Material

Survey Methodology

Forrester’s Global Business Technographics® Infrastructure Survey, 2015, was fielded to 3,592 business and technology decision-makers located in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, New Zealand, the UK, and the US from companies with 2 or more employees. This survey is part of Forrester’s Business Technographics and was fielded from May 2015 to June 2015. ResearchNow fielded this survey on behalf of Forrester. Survey respondent incentives include points redeemable for gift certificates. We have provided exact sample sizes in this report on a question-by-question basis.

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Simplify Your Hybrid Infrastructure Strategy With Cloud ExchangesFebruary 17, 2016

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How Colocation And Interconnection Partners Can Help Support Your Multicloud Future

Forrester’s Business Technographics provides demand-side insight into the priorities, investments, and customer journeys of business and technology decision-makers and the workforce across the globe. Forrester collects data insights from qualified respondents in 10 countries spanning the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Business Technographics uses only superior data sources and advanced data-cleaning techniques to ensure the highest data quality.

We have illustrated only a portion of the survey results in this document. To inquire about receiving full data results for an additional fee, please contact [email protected] or your Forrester account manager.

Endnotes1 You can benchmark your company’s infrastructure priorities against other industries and your competitors using the

following report. See the “Strategic Benchmarks 2015: Infrastructure Priorities” Forrester report.

2 For advice on how to use your infrastructure to engage customers, see the “Evolve Your Infrastructure Architecture For Systems Of Engagement” Forrester report.

3 John Gage, one of the first employees of Sun Microsystems, is credited with coining the tagline “The network is the computer.” It became a battle cry for the company that contributed extensively to the expansion of the Internet. Wired magazine profiled Gage in 1996. Source: Spencer Reiss, “Power To The People,” Wired Magazine, December 1, 1996 (http://www.wired.com/1996/12/esgage/).

4 I&O organizations will be moving traffic that crosses 10 GbE, 40 GbE, and 100 GbE LAN links between servers out to wide-area networks. For more on component-based service designs, see the “Service Design Is Your New Approach To Infrastructure” Forrester report.

5 In this context, hot and cold infrastructure refers to multiple production sites maintained in an active-passive configuration for disaster recovery purposes.

6 A cross-connection is a connection scheme between cabling runs, subsystems, and equipment using patch cords or jumpers that attach to connecting hardware on each end.

7 Source: Melissa Hellmann, “Google Is Investing in a Superfast Fiber-Optic Cable Across the Pacific,” Time Magazine, August 13, 2014 (http://time.com/3106467/google-cable-system-faster-transpacific-nec-telecom-infrastructure/).

8 Noise from neighbors can be traffic from another application or client leveraging the same link. Since Ethernet is about who comes first, network resources can be taken up by another application.

9 SLAs can be associated with each component of the service — some of the cloud providers offer SLAs for port uptime, while carriers and colocation providers offer SLAs for the transport lines.

10 Malicious activity can occur from multiple areas. If the traffic is being tunneled, security devices won’t be able to inspect. Best practice is for each traffic to be encrypted and encrypted by the same company and organization so due diligence can occur on it.

11 Cross-connects are typically found in the backbone of switch or router chassis. They connect the connectivity modules. This is analogous to connecting a bunch of stackable switches together versus using a switch chassis.

12 For more information on AWS direct-connect pricing, check out the company’s website. Source: “AWS Direct Connect,” Amazon Web Services (http://aws.amazon.com/directconnect/).

13 For more information on connection types and use cases associated with each, see the “Beware The Pitfalls Within Networking For Hybrid Cloud” Forrester report.

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FOR INFRASTRUCTURE & OPERATIONS PROFESSIONALS

Simplify Your Hybrid Infrastructure Strategy With Cloud ExchangesFebruary 17, 2016

© 2016 Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. [email protected] or +1 866-367-7378

18

How Colocation And Interconnection Partners Can Help Support Your Multicloud Future

14 The number of companies using multiple types of clouds and the number of developers building apps on those clouds are already high and have been steadily growing, with no sign that those trends will reverse. For more information, see the “Vendor Landscape: Hybrid Cloud Management Solutions” Forrester report.

15 For more information on the growth of service marketplaces, see the “Brief: Service Marketplaces Create A Hub For Your Hybrid Ecosystem” Forrester report.

16 Source: Forrester’s Global Business Technographics Infrastructure Survey, 2015.

17 For the latest trends on SaaS adoption and use, see the “Application Adoption Trends 2015: The SaaS Boom Continues As Businesses Demand Agility” Forrester report.

18 Bringing multiple providers together under one roof can help CIOs build cloud-centric ecosystems that connect employees, partners, and customers in real time. These ecosystems can help your organization simplify engagement models, enable new sources of value and build smarter processes from aggregated cross platform traffic and analytics. See the “Cloud Evolves From Point Solution To Strategic Enabler Of The New Connected Economy” Forrester report.

19 For more on SaaS integration methods, see the “Options For Integrating SaaS Applications” Forrester report.

20 This report describes the current state of cloud brokering platforms and services. See the “Brief: Cloud Broker Solutions Emerge But Remain Fragmented” Forrester report.

21 The following report explains how these hybrid cloud management solutions are expanding brokering capabilities. See the “Vendor Landscape: Hybrid Cloud Management Solutions” Forrester report.

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