Network Transformation: Optimizing Data Center Locations and Carrier Relations for Enhanced Performance

By: Carlie Shooner

As the season of annual resolutions kicks off, it’s time to evaluate and set new goals for many things — among them, perhaps your network configuration. With 2025 in full swing, we predict the digital landscape will continue to ramp up in terms of innovation, new technologies, and demand. Though your network may be performing well at the moment, what works now, or even exceeds expectations, may not work as the landscape shifts and the industry evolves. If the goals you have set for your enterprise are centered around growth, network transformation should be top of mind to be able to achieve that growth as technology rapidly evolves…

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Measuring Interconnectivity: Five Fast-Growing Connectivity Markets to Watch in 2025

By: Jonathan Hjembo

As the world's appetite for faster, more reliable internet reaches new heights, emerging hubs of network interconnection are cropping up across the globe. In following the relentless pace of ICT development, the question I hear the most is, “Where is the next big hub going to be?” Before addressing that, however, it’s useful to consider another question: “What makes a connectivity market a hub?” If data center investment infuses a market, does that make it a hub? How about if a subsea cable lands near a city? Or if a cloud region deploys to a location? Before we break down five markets we’ve got our eye on, let’s look closer at how best to assess the relative strength and potential of connectivity markets…

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Evolving Workforce Training for
Network Transformation

By: Maria Popo

Network transformation is the process of thoroughly changing network infrastructure to improve its efficiency, performance, and scalability. Today, many customers want gig speeds, which are a thousand times faster than the 1Mbps speeds offered when high-speed Internet services first launched twenty-five years ago. Networks have been thrust into transformation with a dizzying trajectory. There are several key trends already simmering and shaping how today’s networks support rapidly evolving technology…

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Tying Everything Together: Why AI Is Just
One Thread in Network Transformation

By: Mattias Fridstrom

Adaptation and creative problem-solving have always driven network transformation. While transformation is unpredictable, we can ponder its potential trajectory by exploring previous trends. From the advent of specific legacy protocols to the proliferation of Dense Wavelength-Division Multiplexing (DWDM) and Ethernet, numerous innovations have persevered while others have fallen by the wayside. In recent years, hyperscalers’ cloud computing requirements redefined network design and operations as service providers invested in their infrastructure to maximize key connectivity qualities essential to these business needs…

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How to Prepare your Network Today for
the coming Quantum Effects

By: Rana Kanaan

The emergence of quantum computing represents a technological milestone with profound implications for networking and cybersecurity. While its computational power promises breakthroughs across industries, quantum computing also threatens to disrupt the foundations of modern network security. Traditional encryption algorithms, long trusted to secure critical communications, could become obsolete in the face of quantum-powered decryption capabilities. For Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) and network architects, this is a call to action…

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How Fiber Optic Networks are Driving Digital Transformation Across Key Industries

By: Michael Underdown

Fiber optic networks are more vital to the digital economy than ever. Innovations in high-definition (HD) video, IoT (Internet of Things), Machine Learning (ML) and AI (Artificial Intelligence) applications are placing increasing demands on the network infrastructure. In addition to the increasing capacity demands, enterprises are requiring more scalability, security and low latency performance to run their cloud applications. The drivers of fiber connectivity growth extend across data center and multi-cloud networking, edge computing, smart appliances, telecommuting, telemedicine, remote learning, e-commerce, and other applications…

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From GPON to 100G-PON: Building Flexible
Broadband Networks for the Future

By: Hy Huynh

In the rapidly evolving landscape of modern connectivity, faster, more reliable broadband networks are required to meet the growing needs of data-intensive applications. As demand for high-speed connectivity grows exponentially, providers must adapt their infrastructure to meet changing requirements without being locked into rigid vendor ecosystems. Cloud-native, virtualized broadband solutions provide a pathway to achieve these goals by enabling flexibility, reducing technology dependencies and accelerating service delivery…

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From CapEx to OpEx: How Network-as-a-Service
(NaaS) Shifts the Financial Burden of Networking

By: Rishit Lakhani

As network connectivity becomes as vital as electricity, modern enterprises are turning to Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) to meet the demands of a fast-paced digital economy. Offering flexible, efficient solutions, NaaS enables organizations to treat network infrastructure as a utility — essential, scalable, and subscription-based. According to a market.us report, the global NaaS market was valued at $14.6 billion in 2023, with projections reaching $115.7 billion by 2032. This article delves into how NaaS helps businesses cut upfront costs, adapt to shifting demands, and optimize network resources to support growth and operational efficiency…

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Connecting Continents: Bridging the Digital Connectivity Divide for Digital Transformation

By: Ivo Ivanov

This has been an uncertain year for businesses. Geopolitical tensions, regional conflicts, economic volatility, and more than half of the world’s population taking to the polls in the largest democratic exercise in history. This uncertainty created friction in the form of higher costs, surging interest rates, and tapering demand, with analysts toward the end of 2023 warning of a potential global recession. Yet businesses are nothing if not resilient, and many have found opportunity amid the uncertainty, with the OECD now projecting a 3…

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In the Evolving AI Landscape, Telecoms
See New Opportunity

By: Steve Douglas

In the initial surge of investment following the first commercial language models (LLMs), it seemed like every enterprise, in every industry, was racing to apply generative AI (GenAI) to their business. Almost all of them used public cloud. This was a sound decision; public cloud providers were among the first to build out the massive, specialized computing infrastructures needed for AI model-training and inferencing. Since then, however, much has changed in the AI landscape. Due to multiple factors (especially concerns about AI data privacy, governance, and costs), many organizations are now rethinking a public cloud-centric approach…

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Letter from the Editor - January 2025

By: Scott St. John - Pipeline

Future predictions will dominate the headlines in the coming months as pundits postulate on where the world is going. But it’s important to discern the noise from information you can trust. Pipeline recently entered its 21st volume, encompassing over 250 issues, thousands of articles, countless (over 20,000) news stories, and over 20 years of industry insights. This gives us a keen perspective about where the world is headed, and our past predictions have panned out pretty well. I've been here long enough to remember back around the turn of the century, when we asked why Microsoft was still shipping CD-ROMs when cloud and SaaS models first began to emerge…

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Enterprise & IT Industry News

By: Thomas Board - Pipeline

As we kick off 2025, a transformative year that could see an acceleration in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and quantum computing, we are share our final roundup of news stories of 2024 to help set the stage. The month’s top industry news stories are summarized below. To view current breaking news in real-time, visit Pipeline’s News Center, follow Pipeline on social media, or subscribe to receive our weekly industry enterprise and communications technology news summary…

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