Ireland to gain as interconnection volumes jump

Ireland could be set to benefit from the rise of a “new internet” as the volume of data shared privately by companies soars, a new report suggests.

Interconnection and data centre company Equinix says that as more companies embrace new technologies, data flow between businesses is growing at twice the rate of the internet. It forecasts that private data exchange between businesses will be six times the bandwidth size of the public internet by 2020.

Overall, global interconnection capacity to privately and directly exchange traffic at distributed IT exchange points will reach 5,000 terabits per second (tbps) by 2020, compared to an expected 855 tbps for the public internet.

The company, which has 182 data centres in 44 regions and 22 countries including Ireland, said industries leading the growth of interconnection are banking and insurance, telecommunications and cloud and IT services.

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"Interconnection in Europe is expected to grow 44 per cent per annum in terms of bandwidth as businesses shift to digital, Equinix Ireland's country manager Maurice Mortell said.

He forecast that Ireland would contribute significantly to interconnection growth in Europe as an increasing number of companies look to locate their data here.

“As enterprises continue to adopt a new digital way of working, we expect Ireland to become a go-to location for international businesses needing to interconnect within Europe,” he said.

“The only realistic way for Irish and Irish-based companies to reach all the global markets, partners and people needed to scale and succeed is to adopt an interconnection-first strategy,” Mr Mortell added.