Seven Reasons Why Interconnection Is Better Than the Public Internet

As is the case with all technologies, IT solutions and offerings of all kinds—both on-premises and cloud-based—continue to evolve. We’ve observed cloud services grow from singular private or public cloud offerings into multicloud solutions facilitated by direct interconnections. Interconnections, offered by a handful of the world’s leading data center hosting providers, enable organizations to connect to one or many cloud providers, telecommunications providers and even other enterprises directly, bypassing the public internet with lower latency, increased performance and enhanced security as a result. In this eWEEK slide show, using industry information from Digital Realty, which operates both colocation and interconnection data centers for enterprises, we offer the top seven factors to consider when comparing interconnections to the public internet.

Interconnection: Allows users to connect to multiple providers across locations through a single interface. This removes many of the complexities and inefficiencies that result from using the public internet for connectivity. Direct connections also all but eliminate latency by avoiding points of contention across the public internet, removing multi-hop architectures and associated overhead.

Internet: Businesses use the user interface (UI) delivered by their service provider for managing their service, support and payments. When utilizing multiple service providers, the business will have to juggle multiple UIs, which is not only time-consuming, but it also creates complexities. Also, there is no direct physical connection with business partners, leaving organizations to accept the latency that comes with information traveling over the internet when a transaction takes place. 

Interconnection: Due to the fact that enterprises are able to connect directly with cloud providers and other enterprise partners across locations, they can create highly secure hybrid cloud solutions without surrendering custody of proprietary data to the public internet. This helps ensure regulatory compliance and customer privacy.

Internet: Security is one of the biggest concerns for enterprises using the public internet. Because the public internet is so easily accessible by anyone—including hackers—business data that traverses the public internet is vulnerable to theft. In 2015 it is estimated that more than a half billion personal records were stolen due to data breaches.

Interconnection: Deliver uninterrupted private connectivity between a user’s owned hardware and the cloud providers upon which they rely. The direct connection provided ensures the best network availability and the highest network performance for hybrid cloud solutions by eliminating the need for a WAN connection between the data center and cloud deployments.

Internet: Connectivity can be unreliable, and speed varies based on the provider as provider networks are not all made up of the same network infrastructure. Besides increased risk of cyber-attacks causing performance issues and occasionally shutting down entire websites, packet-loss and slow transaction times are also concerns with the public internet.

Interconnection: Pay only for what you need and change it daily, weekly or monthly. Interconnections offer enterprises more options to control and manage the equipment and bandwidth they intend to use, and pay for only what is necessary.

Internet: Service is typically delivered to businesses based on a contract for a certain amount of bandwidth and set amount of time. This means you are often either paying for bandwidth you do not use, or you do not have enough bandwidth to support your business needs.

Interconnection: By being able to access both physical and virtual connections through the single portal that interconnections offer, customers can manage even more network elements of their expanded IT environment. Additionally, bandwidth can be increased or decreased on-demand, and physical connections to new service providers or partners can be made instantaneously.

Internet: Users typically pay per month for a certain amount of bandwidth and do not have the ability to turn it up or down based on real-time needs.

Interconnection: Enables organizations to choose from a variety of cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure and others, and to mix and match across regions as needed without the need to establish contracts with each.

Internet: Users are free to select and utilize services from any service provider they chose. However, they do need to set up individual contracts with each provider and access their services via multiple interfaces that would be unique to each provider.

Interconnection: Establishing direct connections with other businesses and business partners under a single virtual roof enables closer, more secure collaboration. Extremely large file transfers, database sharing and high-bandwidth communications offer higher performance and are made easier, more cost-effective and more secure via interconnection.

Internet: There is no special service or ability provided over the public internet that fosters collaboration without sacrificing performance. Public internet users are subject to the usual volatility of the internet, including frequent performance degradation and security vulnerabilities.