Demand remains strong for Data Center, Cloud, and Dedicated Internet Access services, thanks to emerging applications, growth in hybrid working, and the surge in cloud computing
Atlanta, GA – January 30, 2023 – FiberLight, LLC, a fiber infrastructure provider with more than 20 years of experience building and operating mission-critical, high-bandwidth networks, today released the results of a survey of 1,750 executive IT and corporate strategy leaders to better understand their investment strategy regarding high-bandwidth network services. Despite economic uncertainty, the findings of the study indicate that the market remains strong: nearly 88% of respondents said they are still investing in high-bandwidth network services and cited Data Centers, Cloud, and Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) are their top priorities.
Driving this investment is the proliferation of emerging applications like 5G and IoT, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality. Other key factors include the continued growth of remote and hybrid work models and the surge in cloud computing needs where enterprises are migrating all or a portion of their applications to the Cloud.
“Despite the growing concerns of a potential recession and layoffs, businesses are continuing to move forward with plans for fast, secure, and reliable internet access,” said Ron Kormos, Chief Strategy Officer for FiberLight. “Data center strategy has been and continues to be a major driver for connectivity. We have consistently seen a demand for this connectivity and anticipate this will continue. We also anticipate additional growth in cloud computing needs.”
Many organizations today are either running their business from the Cloud or moving toward running their business from the Cloud. Cloud-based software is essential for these organizations, giving businesses flexibility for their employees to work from anywhere while handling the complexities of redundancy, software upgrades, and data storage. The Cloud applications executives reported hosting include Unified Communications and Collaboration (Zoom, Webex, Teams, etc.: 22% of respondents), Security SaaS (22% of respondents), CRM Saas (18% of respondents), and other SaaS applications.
A little more than 43% of executives said that their investment will focus on Urban Metro geographic areas, while just 27% said their investment will focus on Rural areas, and about 29% will focus on Suburban areas. This reflects the fact that rural areas continue to be underserved. In today’s dynamic market where, between remote work, hybrid work, and return-to-office initiatives, people are working from anywhere in the world, and organizations need fast, highly-secure, and reliable options which are not often available in rural areas. These options include connectivity to their own data center, access to multiple cloud service providers, and private network connectivity like dark fiber or private ethernet networks.
When it comes to connectivity upgrades, executives responded that their most pressing priorities are security upgrades, followed closely by speed/low latency connectivity upgrades. Because much of today’s organizational information and data resides in the Cloud, this type of flexibility drives the need for greater security.
“FiberLight is focused on expanding our footprint and expanding the edge closer to customer locations in order to facilitate new applications that address both latency and security,” said Jay Anderson, CTO and Chief Engineer, FiberLight. “Additionally, FiberLight is continuing to improve our monitoring and management tools to provide greater visibility into network performance which will result in a stronger customer experience,” he said.
“The survey is consistent with much of what FiberLight is experiencing in today’s very dynamic market where people are working in numerous ways–either on-site, remotely, or a combination of the two. They want robust, highly-secure–even private–services to support their network strategy, and especially in underserved rural and suburban geographies,” said Peter Gallagher, Chief Operating Officer of FiberLight. “FiberLight is well positioned to serve today’s market and those customers who want reliable connectivity to their own data center, robust access to multiple Cloud Service Providers, or highly-secure, private network connectivity,” he said.
FiberLight, a fiber infrastructure provider that builds and operates high-bandwidth networks, conducted the survey in December 2022. The 1,750 survey respondents comprised IT and corporate strategy executives who primarily work for companies in the technology software/services sector, although respondents represented companies from a variety of industries. Most respondents work at companies with at least 500 employees. Most respondents (41%) said their business uses a Hybrid Cloud model to support applications––a mix of on-premises data center components and cloud-hosted data center components. A little more than 36% use a Cloud Data Center model.
The full results are available at FiberLight.com.
With existing backbone infrastructure and unmatched density, FiberLight is equipped to deploy a multitude of solutions in their communities to meet growing bandwidth needs. To learn more, visit www.fiberlight.com.
About FiberLight
FiberLight designs, builds, and deploys mission-critical high bandwidth networks to ignite our client’s digital transformation. With approximately 18,000 route miles of fiber networks and 78,000 pre-qualified near-net buildings, FiberLight operates in over 30 metropolitan areas in the U.S. Our service portfolio includes high-capacity Ethernet and Wave Transport Services, Cloud Connect, Dedicated Internet Access, Dark Fiber and Wireless Backhaul serving domestic and international telecom companies, wireless, wireline, cable and cloud providers as well as key players across enterprise, government, and education. For more information, visit fiberlight.com or follow us on Twitter @FiberLight_LLC.
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