Datacenter Interconnect Requirements Fueled by Regulatory Mandates and Big Data

Datacenters around the globe need to meet bigger and better business requirements with every passing day, and one of the biggest hurdles to cross is how to connect different datacenters to one another. One of the biggest challenges that IT organizations are facing in this rapidly expanding datacenter environment is Datacenter Interconnect (DCI) and how to best integrate compatibility between it and company data centers. DCI governs the requirements for connecting two or more datacenter sites that are located in different areas, and even datacenters within the same enterprise often have incompatible settings. So who or what sets the standards for DCI?

Recent research uncovered from a survey by the International Data Corporation (IDC) seems to show that DCI service offerings are being driven by the expansion of Big Data and regulatory mandates. Specifically, the IDC found that the services offered by DCI are growing very rapidly, and that even more services will emerge in 2014.

The ability for datacenters to process large sets of big data have made analysis of such data vitally important to businesses, allowing them to better predict customer and market behavior. Because DCI regulations are able to make the results from big data processing more accessible, it is increasingly important within the business community.

According to the survey, more than half of the respondents used DCI primarily as a tool for enabling business continuity and disaster recovery, so that databases can be transferred to safety if necessary. However, a growing number of respondents wanted to use DCI for Dynamic workload scheduling, asynchronous data replication, and other emerging processes.

Overall, the IDC survey saw that DCI is a critical focus point for enterprise IT, network and telecom managers. Ensuring that a DCI network is reliable and has a consistent uptime are some of the most important considerations businesses have when choosing a service provider, no matter what business the client is in.