Read details of each prediction from the official Equinix blog: http://eqix.it/2hn1bdh We can’t predict the future of the entire IT industry, but we sit at an unusually good vantage point at Equinix to make an educated, data-driven forecast about what we see coming. That’s because we have the capability to look at what’s trending with more than 8,000 customers across 21 markets within ecosystems that sit at the center of cloud, IoT and analytics growth. And the patterns we are seeing show a massive digital transformation under way. Digital has disrupted business as usual, and new revenue models and ways of competing are taking hold. To successfully make the shift to digital business, organizations are realizing they need transform IT by “flipping” their architectures from siloed and fixed to integrated and dynamic. This shift requires an interconnection-first strategy that enables enterprises and service providers to directly and securely connect their partners, customers and end users to anything, anywhere, on any device. Digital businesses simply can’t compete without an integrated and dynamic strategy to make that happen. As things change quickly, we're taking advantage of our special perspective at the center of it all to predict what you can expect in “7 Bold Predictions for the Connected Enterprise.” We’ll be exploring these predictions in more detail in the coming days, but these previews will get us started.

1. 7 BOLD PREDICTIONS
FOR THE CONNECTED ENTERPRISE
FROM EQUINIX FOR 2017
© 2016 Equinix, Inc.

2. 1. THE YEAR OF
MULTI-CLOUD CONVERGENCE
2017 will be the tipping point, when the
convergence of multiple clouds across the
enterprise – data, applications, infrastructure
and personal clouds – will fundamentally
change the way people and businesses
operate.
© 2016 Equinix, Inc.

3. 2. THE RISE OF THE
DIGITAL EDGE
The convergence of multiple clouds will call
for a natural extension of the corporate
boundaries for today’s digital business to the
edge – where users and data reside. This
will be important for businesses to better
engage with customers in real-time,
leveraging social, mobile, analytics
and cloud technologies.
© 2016 Equinix, Inc.

4. Companies will move to connect their digital and
physical worlds – to support business around the
globe.
As enterprises leverage multiple clouds, it
can be challenging to manage solutions
across different cloud environments
from different vendors. 2017 will see
the acceptance of an interconnected
fabric among enterprises – residing
in carrier neutral facilities – to
create a central nervous system
that connects all aspects of
the digital business.
3. RISE OF THE
INTERCONNECTED FABRIC
© 2016 Equinix, Inc.

5. 4. SECURITY BECOMES
PARAMOUNT
© 2016 Equinix, Inc.
As hybrid cloud becomes more popular,
enterprises will realize that cloud providers do
not provide all encompassing security solutions
and will need to own the security of their
applications and data within the multi-
cloud environment. Interconnections
will provide customers the choice to
move from point security solutions to
the flexibility of buying Security-as-
a-Service with benefits such as
speed of implementation, ease of
set-up and maintenance, real-
time protection, etc.

6. 5. THE AGE OF
INTERCONNECTED COMMERCE
© 2016 Equinix, Inc.
The payments world is undergoing more rapid
change than it has encountered since the dawn
of currency. The standard proprietary siloed
approach for payments services delivery
is giving way to new technologies and
business models at the intersection of
commerce and payments. Concurrently,
the decentralization of payments
services technology is expanding
value and optimizing business
platforms for merchants.
Interconnected commerce and
payments providers will create
new opportunities for the
integration of payments,
commerce, data, and
marketing, enabling
new solutions and
partnerships around
the globe.

7. 6. SOFTWARE-DEFINED
INFRASTRUCTURE AND
ADVANCED NETWORKING
© 2016 Equinix, Inc.
Networking that previously depended on physical
wiring can now be dynamically controlled via
software. Going forward, the next generation
infrastructure - compute, storage, network
and data centers - will be open source
based. Software Defined Networking
(SDN) and Network Functions
Virtualization (NFV) centralize and
automate the management of large,
distributed multi-data center
networks using simple application
level policies.

8. 7. THE INTERNET OF THINGS
© 2016 Equinix, Inc.
IoT will truly evolve from single vendor
independent solutions to those that talk to each
other leveraging the same data. Going forward,
the objective will be to relieve pressure on
corporate-centric networks by distributing
the traffic more broadly as well as to
better control the performance of the
streaming IoT information for more
real-time business and operational
insight.