Content is king, no I don’t mean content marketing, think content delivery networks. Think optical networks delivering bandwidth hungry video applications around the globe, our SaaSy reality, the IoT and 4K.  While digital transformation is driving change, content is playing the role of muse in this production.

One region in particular demanding capacity is Asia, which hosts nearly two-thirds of the world’s population, which is why exponential growth in Internet traffic should come as no surprise; neither should the mass exodus to cloud-based services. Users want on-demand access to application, services and content. And not just access, but high quality access at that.

Another trend pushing demand in Asia – and the rest of the world for that matter – is the impending barrage of IoT traffic. Forecasts place the number of installed IoT devices by the year 2020 at over 20 billion; that’s going to require a whole lot of capacity.

Digger deeper into the data center, meeting these demands head on requires four key tenants. DCI, content providers and service providers must first provide extremely high-speed connectivity. We’re talking client interfaces at 100GbE, with as much as 400G per wavelength in metro locations. Secondly, the ability to scale rapidly is paramount, so the capability of upping connectivity capacity into terabits via modularly licenses is critical.

Management must be easy. User-friendly interfaces and open APIs for management, provisioning and automation programmability are a key component. This robust suite of management tools must put IT in the driver seat of a “connected car.” Once deployed and parameters set any further changes are either quick or automated, enabling IT to focus on other big picture projects. Finally, the networking solution s must practice low-power consumption. Why? Because you’d be amazed at what a data center’s power bill looks like – seriously.

When piecing together cloud service offerings it’s vital to ensure the proper solutions are selected in order to deliver the expected results.

What’s in your network?