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"We are conditioned to expect everything faster, better and cheaper. In short, impatience has become the new 21st century virtue and influences all aspects of business, particularly when it comes to technology. When we switch on our computers, we expect the web page or the video we want to be served up immediately. The arrival of fibre optic network links delivered just that – access to the worldwide web at the speed of light. This opened the door to cloud computing and, with it, high expectations of accessing cloud platforms from any location in an instant. However, fibre's ability to deliver at the "speed of light" doesn't automatically equate to all applications being delivered in this manner. It's the makeup of the cloud that makes it fast – its location, type and technology dictate whether those pulling down information from the cloud find themselves in the slow or fast lane. So how can organisations guarantee lightening speed access to their cloud-based, business-critical information?"
Achieving the holy grail of an instant cloud starts with understanding what dictates its speed. The very ability to use the internet as a personal television started with fibre; it is fibre that was capable of transporting 50 times as much data as previous technology by using light rather than electrical waves. Even though data whizzes along at the speed of light, the download speeds between London and Amsterdam and London and New York will always be different. The elephant in the room is latency. From the very first click on a web page, a "three-way handshake" (there, back, there again) ensures two computers are correctly synchronised to exchange data reliably. And, when a file is downloaded, the receiver acknowledges each block of data as it is received safely, allowing the sender to continue. This symmetrical behaviour values shorter distances over longer distances – simply because the less time computers are sat waiting for acknowledgements, the more time they spend moving data. This is why a 6,000-mile return trip on today's fastest submarine cables from London to New York takes 70 milliseconds, whereas a much shorter journey to Amsterdam and back, takes just eight milliseconds. To put this into context, a person in London pulling information from a cloud hosted in New York might struggle to attain downloads speeds of 10-15Mbps, whereas the same download request sent to a data centre in Amsterdam could probably hit 40-50Mbps.
Yes, it's all about location – and it's not just the proximity that makes a location special. Logic dictates that when transporting data from one side of the world to the other, the most direct route is the fastest. Consequently, a dispersed jigsaw of the most powerful internet hubs was born – London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and New York. It's these internet hubs that fire up data; they act as powerful exchanges pushing traffic to its destination. And, it means that cities such as Dublin, that sit right at the end of the line where information terminates, would never be in a position to qualify as a super internet hub.
The network is the computer The power of cloud computing isn't just ignited by powerful internet hubs and its proximity to them. The "magic" of the cloud really comes alive if built inside the network. And it is the dedication of this asset as the cloud computing backbone that will influence whether the experience of accessing it is an instant one. Imagine if the shortest and most direct route on the motorway was reserved for just one organisation. The employees in that organisation could use it whenever they wanted, and it wouldn't matter if thousands of other people decided to travel at the same time. It is creating this "fast lane" for a cloud that will make it special. The act of creating individual super-highways is where the magic happens. By pairing dedicated networks with technologies such as MPLS, traffic to and from a cloud can be secured to allow for private cloud security with public cloud convenience. In simple terms, a cloud supported by an expansive intelligent network, underpinned by location savvy internet hubs will enable organisations to cheat the speed of light.