Forrester - Simplify Your Hybrid Infrastructure With Cloud Exchanges

Simplify Your Hybrid Infrastructure Strategy With
Cloud Exchanges
How Colocation And Interconnection Partners Can Help Support Your Multicloud Future
by Sophia I. Vargas and Andre Kindness
February 17, 2016
FOR INFRASTRUCTURE & OPERATIONS PROFESSIONALS
FORRESTER.COM
Key Takeaways
Providers And Partners Are Making It Easier To
Connect Your Network To Others
Connecting your network to others is easier
because the providers in this new market do
much of the hard work for you, allowing you to
capitalize on this simplicity with self-service,
application programming interfaces, and rich
feedback so you can adapt quickly and steal
customers from your competitors.
Cloud Service Marketplaces Streamline
Business Decisions And Fuel New Economics
When providers can compete on a level playing
field, customers win. You -- the customer -- get
cheaper services that are actually superior. The
result can be good for you, but the economics
may disrupt the status quo.
Colocation Services Are The Battlefields Of
This New Cloud Service Ecosystem
Telecom carriers, cloud partners, and others are
fighting for your business. The best colocation
providers are leading the way, forcing others to
either emulate them or partner with them.
Why Read This Report
As the cloud market matures, more critical
business applications will continue to move into
cloud environments. In this increasingly hybrid
environment, infrastructure and operations (I&O)
professionals need to ensure performance no
matter where services are located. Performance
of the network is key to ensuring the quality
of these services. This report helps I&O
professionals compare current and emerging
models around private, dedicated connections
into cloud environments and how these variations
will impact BT agenda decisions going forward.

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© 2016 Forrester Research, Inc. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester®
,
Technographics®
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Table Of Contents
In A Hybrid World, The Data Center Has No
Center — It’s A Network
For Some Workloads, The Internet Is Not
Good Enough
Cloud Connect Services Expand And
Diversify
Cloud Exchanges Are Positioned To Support
Multi-Cloud Ambitions
Connected Communities Are A Win-Win For
Customers And Partners
Recommendations
Let Business Outcomes Drive Your
Interconnection Strategy
What It Means
Evolving Economics Blur Public And Private
Network Boundaries
Supplemental Material
Notes & Resources
Forrester spoke with cloud, colocation, network,
and interconnection providers, as well as
customers using these services, in the formation
of this research.
Related Research Documents
Brief: Service Marketplaces Create A Hub For
Your Hybrid Ecosystem
Embrace The Hybrid Technology Ecosystem For
Service Design
Vendor Landscape: Colocation And Data Center
Services
Simplify Your Hybrid Infrastructure Strategy With Cloud Exchanges
by Sophia I. Vargas and Andre Kindness
with Glenn O’Donnell and Andrew Hewitt
February 17, 2016

February 17, 2016
© 2016 Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law.
Citations@forrester.com or +1 866-367-7378
2
In A Hybrid World, The Data Center Has No Center — It’s A Network
The data center fueled business through the Internet revolution. As we transition into the age of the
customer, the data center has undergone a dramatic change. Your technology agenda to win, serve,
and retain customers demands a more flexible, more distributed architecture, and you — the I&O
professional — must lead this transformation. For most organizations today, the data center has
already extended beyond traditional owned infrastructure to include a collection of assets across
owned, colocated, managed, and cloud environments.1
As the business continues to invest in systems
of engagement to provide compelling experiences for its customers, your infrastructure resources will
become more distributed to support your globally dispersed customer base.2
The Network Is The Computer — More Than Ever
Sun Microsystems trademarked the phrase “The network is the computer” in the early 1990s, and it
quickly caught on as Sun powered the Internet wave.3
Your distributed digital business architecture
relies on more network infrastructure than ever — and much of it is out of your direct control. More
services stretch across heterogeneous resources in multiple locations. Not only will your WAN network
traffic greatly expand but service quality will increasingly depend on the quality of connections between
components of the service.4
As data center architectures move away from centralized compute farms
toward interconnected meshes of hot, cold, owned, and managed resources, infrastructure decision-
makers increasingly look to locate new data center assets in carrier-dense locations (see Figure 1).5
Basically, I&O professionals want a cross-connect platform that delivers architecture at scale.6

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FIGURE 1 Infrastructure Decision-Makers Are Concerned About Latency
Note: Not all responses shown.
Source: Forrester’s Global Business Technographics®
Infrastructure Survey, 2015
Network connectivity options/carrier
availability/carrier density
Site risk profile
Location of the data center facility
where your data is stored
Legal or compliance regulations
Access to cloud, managed services
providers, or other partners
81%
80%
74%
78%
70%
Base: 852 global infrastructure decision-makers whose firms prioritize servers and the data center
(1,000+ employees)
“How important are the following when choosing a data center facility?”
(4 or 5 on a scale from 1 [not at all important] to 5 [very important])
Public Cloud Providers Demonstrate Architecture At Scale
Cloud providers and colocation companies have created collections of infrastructure resources
that behave like one dynamic asset with the network as the linchpin. Colocation providers engineer
redundant infrastructure, power, and network connections to increase availability, while hyperscale
cloud providers achieve high availability via dynamic flexibility across multiple assets in distinct risk
zones. For example, Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) Northern Virginia region includes five availability
zones. Each zone is separated by about 1 to 2 milliseconds (about 125 to 250 miles) — enough
distance to diversify risk but close enough to support high-availability application architectures. While
each zone consists of one or more complete data centers, each supporting 25 MW to 35 MW and
50,000 to 80,000 servers, from the customer’s perspective, these behave as one data center.
For Some Workloads, The Internet Is Not Good Enough
While an Internet connection might be fine for many SaaS and mobile applications, most data center
traffic that leverages 10 GbE, 40 GbE, or 100 GbE connections between servers will screech to a halt
once this same traffic tries to traverse the Internet. The idea that “the Internet is good enough” isn’t good
enough for businesses based on three recent trends: 1) Since 2013, cloud providers have been scrambling

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to offer better connectivity methods — such as AWS Direct Connect, Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute,
and SoftLayer Direct Link — for their clients; 2) even between cloud provider sites, Amazon, Google,
and Facebook have or are rolling out their own fiber and networks; and 3) a whole new market of
colocation services, managed services, and new carrier cloud WAN services has emerged to support this
requirement.7
As outlined in Forrester’s “Beware The Pitfalls Within Networking For Hybrid Cloud” report,
business-critical applications that require more than the Internet’s best-effort approach need:
›› Consistent performance. Some of the traffic needs a certain amount of bandwidth, requires
first rights to resource-buffers and queues, traverses the network in the shortest amount of time,
and needs to send the payloads in a certain order. Dedicated connections, quality-of-service
capabilities, and bandwidth guarantees protect the traffic from congestion and noisy neighbors.8
›› A basic set of thresholds/guarantees. Most providers offer uptime service-level agreements
(SLAs) of 99.9% availability and above to ensure a reliable and consistent connection.9
This helps
I&O organizations know what they are working with at minimum so they can add or subtract
guarantees based on the needs of the applications, services, or business requirements.
›› Complementary security and network services. Running all applications through a VPN
connection — a single tunnel — can be a security hole.10
These single tunnels hide indicators
the network needs to optimize the traffic. I&O pros should interweave network and security
components to enable per-application traffic controls and policies with Zero Trust architecture built
around the applications and data.
›› A WAN fabric. As highlighted in Forrester’s “Three Forcing Functions That Will Extend Your Data
Center’s Network Services Beyond Its Walls” report, the network will become a large network
fabric. If these fabric connections can be established through a cross-connect location, this
will eliminate the complexity and costs of trying to do this yourself between carriers and cloud
providers.11
Additionally, data transfer fees for private dedicated connections from providers like
AWS are lower compared with public Internet connections.12
Cloud Connect Services Expand And Diversify
Alongside the impressive growth in cloud services, dedicated cloud connections are becoming more
prevalent and available. Most of the leading cloud providers have launched products to enable these
kinds of connections. Within this product category, delivery mechanisms come in a few distinct
flavors, as there are a variety of transport technologies and routing options that could sit below this
service (see Figure 2). While each provides the same outcome — a private, dedicated connection that
bypasses the public Internet — the nuance of the underlying architecture will impact the management,
flexibility, and cost characteristics of this service (see Figure 3 and see Figure 4).13
At the simplest
interpretation, your dedicated cloud connection options include:

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›› One-to-one. This is typically an Ethernet cross-connect or leased private line connecting your
infrastructure in an owned or colocated facility into a cloud provider’s edge. Deployment time and
flexibility will depend on whether the provider lays a new connection or provisions capacity over an
existing connection. Pricing is typically a monthly fee per cross-connect if located in a colocation
provider or speed variable (cost per Mbps) for longer fiber routes.
›› One-to-many. This refers to a cloud exchange model. Similar to Internet exchanges, cloud
exchanges provide MeetMe platforms to enable connections to multiple clouds. Customers
purchase a port into the cloud exchange and dynamically provision virtual cross-connects into any
cloud provider connected to that exchange. Pricing is broken out as a fee per port plus monthly
recurring costs for each virtual cross-connect.
›› Any-to-any. This refers to an IP VPN/MPLS connection that will add a cloud node to a customer’s
WAN, thus providing cloud access from any office or data center on the WAN. It can include
multiple cloud nodes. This type of connection can help alleviate the bottleneck associated with
funneling all of your cloud traffic through one facility. On the back end, these connections may be
routed through peering points or cloud exchanges. These services are typically provided by carrier
providers, and thus are subject to carrier rates.
FIGURE 2 Interconnection Methods
Customer Cloud edge
One-to-one
Customer Cloud edgesexchange
One-to-many
Customer
WAN
Any-to-any
Over carrier
network
Cloud edges
Cross-connect into
cloud exchange +
virtual cross-connect
inside exchange
Within colocation
facility
Private line/MPLS
to cloud edge
Ethernet cross-
connect
Private line/MPLS
into cloud exchange +
virtual cross-connect
inside exchange
IP VPN/MPLS
between customer
WAN and cloud edge
Cloud
N/A
Delivery partner characteristics
Customer
Dedicated cloud connection types

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FIGURE 3 Pricing Categories And Rates
Provider
Carrier
Colocation
Cloud
Cloud service
provider port
Port into cloud network
edge
$0
$0.02-$0.14
per GB
$55-$5000
per Mbps per
month
Unlimited
Unlimited
50 Mbps-10 Gbps
Data transfer charges out
of CSP
Data transfer charges
into CSP
Data ingress
Data egress
Cross-connect
Typically Ethernet within
a colocation facility
or campus
$250-$350
per link per
month
1 Gbps-10 Gbps
Virtual cross-
connect
VLAN over Ethernet
within a cloud exchange
$100-$200
per link per
month
200 Mbps-1 Gbps
Cloud
exchange port
Port into cloud exchange
$100-$200
per port
per month
1 Gbps-10 Gbps
Network
transport
Options for IP VPN,
MPLS, VPLS, Ethernet
$300-$600
per Mbps
per month
50 Mbps-10 Gbps
Cost category Category details Cost range Size range
Note: Pricing accurate as of December 2015
Cross-connect,
port or other
Additional charges vary by transport methodology,
connection size, usage, and additional services

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Partner Offerings Are Skewed To Their Own Core Competencies
Most cloud providers do not directly sell proprietary network services and thus rely on partners to deliver
this class of connection. Typically providers will expose edge locations or peering points in key markets.
Partners can then lay new connections or provision capacity over their existing network to provide
dedicated cloud connectivity to customer environments in colocation or owned facilities. New connections
can be initiated from either the cloud provider console or via the connection partner. These services are
provided by a variety of partners, each characterized by the provider’s primary service offering:
›› Carriers provide transport to and from cloud providers. This category includes
telecommunications, bandwidth, and wholesale carrier providers. Sample solutions include AT&T
NetBond and Verizon Secure Cloud Interconnect. Typically these connections are provisioned
over existing fiber footprints. Dark fiber connections to your infrastructure can be provisioned as
needed, including point-to-point MPLS connections. Most can be extended to multiple offices or
clouds depending on the network and cloud provider’s footprint. Many of these offerings include
managed network, security, and WAN services as an added feature.
›› Colocation facilities host communities of carriers and cloud providers. The vast majority of
colocation providers offer cross-connect services to connect customers and carriers. Standard
practice increasingly offers cross-connects into cloud providers with edge nodes present in that
facility. In facilities not containing cloud edges, connections require cross-connections into carrier
partners like Zayo and Level 3 Communications that can complete the circuit. Even providers with
FIGURE 4 Cloud Provider Connection Costs
Amazon Web Services
(AWS)
Microsoft Azure
Google Cloud
Platform
IBM SoftLayer
Carrier
Interconnect
Direct Link
$0
$0.04-$0.06
per GB
$0
10-50 TB included
in base fee
ExpressRoute
$55-$5,000 per month;
$300-$51,300 per
month for unlimited
data transfer
$1,500-$5,000
per month; $400
per month within
cloud exchange
$0
$0
$0.025-$0.14
per GB; no
additional
cost for unlimited
Direct Connect
$0.03-$2.25 per
hour ($22-$1,700
per month)
$0 for wire; $200
for 50 TB
appliance based
bulk upload
$0.02-$0.11
per GB
Product name Port costs Data ingress Data egress
Note: Pricing accurate as of December 2015. Circuit redundancy and regional restrictions vary by base
offering.

February 17, 2016
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proprietary infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) services like CenturyLink and Interoute also offer
cross-connects into hyperscale cloud providers. Market leaders like Equinix and CoreSite have
launched cloud exchange platforms in addition to individual cross-connects.
›› Managed service providers help manage the complexity. Like the carrier model, managed
network services vendors like CFN Services and Masergy provision private connections over
their own existing network and ports into cloud providers or cloud exchanges, managing isolation
through virtual private connections. As your data center and network architectures become more
complex, support from managed service providers can help alleviate challenges associated with
management, orchestration, and security.
›› Software-defined solutions open the curtain to control and visibility. Interconnection providers
like IIX and Megaport have implemented software-focused solutions to provide a management
console over this process, enabling customers to dynamically scale up and back as needed by
automating connectivity provisioning and configurations over partner and propriety networks. Cost
structures echo the transport technology included in the underlying circuit. These providers are
present in prominent exchange hubs, many within colocation facilities like Equinix, CoreSite, and Telx.
Colocation Will Bring Your Infrastructure Closer To Cloud Edges
For organizations not colocated in the same facility as their cloud provider, chances are high that
these dedicated connections will likely be routed through carrier partners or nearby cloud exchange
hubs. Many of these exist within colocation facilities (see Figure 5). As the predominant use cases
requiring private, dedicated connections are dependent upon latency, organizations seeking to build
hybrid applications should consider locating infrastructure in colocation facilities to be close to cloud
nodes or carrier-dense peering points.

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FIGURE 5 Colocation, Carrier Exchanges, And Cloud Nodes Expand Your Data Footprint
Cloud locations
Note: The size of the bubble indicates the number of colocation vendors in that city.
North America5-1
Internet exchange location
1-5 colo vendors
6-15 colo vendors
Above 15 colo vendors

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FIGURE 5 Colocation, Carrier Exchanges, And Cloud Nodes Expand Your Data Footprint (Cont.)
South America5-2
Cloud locations
1-5 colo vendors
6-15 colo vendors

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Europe5-3
Cloud locations
1-5 colo vendors
6-15 colo vendors

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Asia Pacific5-4
Cloud locations
1-5 colo vendors
6-15 colo vendors

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Cloud Exchanges Are Positioned To Support Multi-Cloud Ambitions
Like Internet exchanges, the key benefit of cloud exchanges comes from the quantity and variety of service
providers available. As many organizations now use services from multiple cloud providers — most using
hybrid combinations of SaaS applications, services built on PaaS solutions, or IaaS resources — cloud
exchanges present a compelling model to dynamically connect multiple clouds without the complexity,
expense, and delay of provisioning multiple physical connections.14
Cloud Exchanges Leverage The Agility Of Cloud Services
Equinix piloted the concept of the service marketplace — a virtual marketplace designed to showcase
available partner services at each location.15
Cloud exchanges as a concept are similar to service
marketplaces in that they showcase a community of available services available for cross-connects
all under the same virtual roof. What makes cloud exchanges unique is the ability to leverage the
flexibility, speed, and empowerment benefits of cloud services. Managed services contracts may require
customization per organization, but cloud services can be provisioned and scaled up or down in a matter
of minutes due to the standardized, self-service, pay-per-use nature of cloud services. Additionally, Equinix
and CoreSite provide APIs around their cloud exchanges to enable dynamic controls from other platforms.
Connected Communities Are A Win-Win For Customers And Partners
For most organizations, cloud usage will only increase. In 2015, 26% of enterprise infrastructure
decision-makers in North America and Europe had implemented public cloud services, and another
14% are planning to implement cloud services in the next 12 months.16
For most colocation providers,
cross-connect services are limited to carriers and prominent IaaS providers — namely AWS,
Azure, Google, and SoftLayer. However, most enterprise cloud adoption and usage has focused on
supplementing or replacing applications with SaaS alternatives.17
Cloud exchanges have widened
cross-connection services into a variety of cloud service providers across IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS
solutions providing storage, security, disaster recovery services, and more. CoreSite showcases
upward of 22 providers, while Equinix exchanges have access to more than 50 providers. Having
multiple partners in one low-latency community creates more opportunities for customers and
providers alike to control traffic costs, simplify integrations, and make the most of dynamic network
provisioning.18
Looking forward, cloud exchanges have the potential to:
›› Provide compelling economics for multiple private, dedicated connections. Through various
engagements, Forrester clients have indicated WAN costs as one of the larger reoccurring
networking costs they would like to trim and one reason straight-to-Internet has been an attractive
option. Once a customer has access to a cloud exchange, connecting to additional clouds within
the same exchange will always be cheaper than any of the other dedicated solutions, thus enabling
economies of scale with private networking costs. As these connected communities mature, more
connections and partnerships between service providers will only increase pricing options for
customers. Competition will drive costs down.

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›› Simplify cloud-to-cloud integrations. Connected communities not only make it easy for customers
to connect to many partners, but also for partners to connect to each other. They can leverage
each other’s platforms and services and enable out-of-the-box integrations for common customers.
Many solution providers now use app stores to showcase prebuilt integrations to complementary
solutions.19
If the cloud exchange model continues to move toward a service marketplace, cloud
exchanges will become another avenue to showcase out-of-the-box integrations, as well as provide
access to integration-as-a-service providers. Given that the most common form of application
integration is data import/export, use cases that require frequent, high-volume data transfers
between applications will benefit from these low-latency dedicated connections.
›› Support cloud broker platforms and ecosystems. As vendors recognize that most organizations
are using multiple cloud services, more providers are starting to offer variations on cloud brokering
solutions — designed to compare costs, manage supply, and aggregate demand of cloud services
across multiple platforms.20
While current interoperability challenges limit portability between cloud
providers, the flexibility of cloud exchanges to dynamically provision private connectivity to multiple
providers via API calls could provide a convenient complement to cloud brokering platforms.
Hybrid cloud management software solutions now commonly include such brokering capabilities,
and we expect these to improve dramatically.21
Recommendations
Let Business Outcomes Drive Your Interconnection Strategy
As enterprise data centers continue to extend into multiple types of environments, managing
integrations and orchestrating resources across multiple environments is only going to get more
complex. While dedicated connectivity options could simplify network management, for organizations
that are not adjacent to their cloud platform or a cloud exchange, public connections will most likely be
cheaper. Thus organizations will need to justify the additional costs of private connections with specific
use cases and business outcomes. Due to the latency sensitivity of the workloads driving the need
for private connections, organizations should evaluate partners based on peering location, required
bandwidth, and accessibility of additional resources. In general, I&O professionals should:
›› Account for the limitations of each provider and service. Across cloud providers, slight nuances
exist in implementing private connections when it comes to automating network tasks, spinning
up and down network services and controls, available managed services, access to additional
regions, SLAs, the number of circuits included per subscription, and where the redundancy exists
within the circuit. Evaluate solutions based on the characteristics of the workloads in question,
recognizing the usage limitations of these services as well as the latency sensitivity. For example, a
single connection provides low-latency access to cloud in one region that may only be one of many
locations containing your infrastructure.

February 17, 2016
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›› Identify a partner that can work with your existing network portfolio. Most customers look to
extend contracts and relationships with carrier providers — or leverage favorable cross-connects
adjacent to existing infrastructure — rather than work with a new provider. As organizations continue to
evaluate opportunities to outsource commodity services and use internal employees more strategically,
organizations should consider interconnection partners that can support these requirements.
›› Follow the development of cloud exchanges and connected communities. The concepts and
defined solutions of cloud exchanges, service marketplaces, service app stores, and brokerage
platforms will continue to evolve. These services may provide the platforms that will help you
simplify orchestration and management across a hybrid and heterogeneous ecosystem.
What It Means
Evolving Economics Blur Public And Private Network Boundaries
Cloud adoption is straining the definition of the enterprise network. Rather than a tightly controlled,
fully private network, you face more complex multisourcing and management issues. These will
soon overwhelm the I&O organization if it doesn’t properly prepare. The most dramatic changes are
in the economics, which will be alien to most longtime I&O professionals and finance executives.
Developments that will prove strange but very beneficial include:
›› Network borders will become difficult to identify. Given that the proportion of owned
infrastructure continues to shrink, organizations will continue to balance traffic between public and
private networks for extreme flexibility and improved cost management. As more providers open
up access to proprietary network edges, more customers can leverage cloud interconnections
to extend geographic reach via a provider’s footprint. If these extensions are provisioned over a
proprietary connection, the customer has effectively extended the reach of their private network.
The demarcation between your private networks and your partners’ private networks will begin to
disappear. With virtual network infrastructure, boundaries are transparent anyway.
›› The new network will become a powerful competitive weapon. The flexibility you gain from a
cloud exchange lets you make business decisions quickly and then act on them at cloud speed.
While your competitors are wrestling with outdated sourcing models, you can be serving your
customers with faster, more capable business services — leaving your competition defeated and
likely falling further behind. The network matters more than ever. No longer just a commodity, it has
become the fabric of your digital business.
›› Networks will get cheaper and better. As the variety of connections increase, anticipate that
the economics of these connections will continue to evolve and challenge traditional pricing
structures and integration capabilities. Competition in the exchanges will naturally lead to cheaper
connectivity options and more features. Telecommunications carriers that depend on the decades-
old model of network connectivity will feel the most pain as they are forced to adapt to this nimble
new cloud-like model.

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›› Opex economics will become more prominent. Much of the infrastructure expense in traditional
companies is capital expense — absorbed as a lump sum and amortized over time. New cloud
economics, now being applied to the network, changes enough of this capex to opex. Opex is a
challenge to many firms because expenses come in regular intervals — like monthly billing — and
vary based on usage. This is a far better model, but one that requires a painful shift in thinking
across all levels of the enterprise — and especially the CFO.
Supplemental Material
Survey Methodology
Forrester’s Global Business Technographics® Infrastructure Survey, 2015, was fielded to 3,592 business
and technology decision-makers located in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India,
New Zealand, the UK, and the US from companies with 2 or more employees. This survey is part of
Forrester’s Business Technographics and was fielded from May 2015 to June 2015. ResearchNow
fielded this survey on behalf of Forrester. Survey respondent incentives include points redeemable for
gift certificates. We have provided exact sample sizes in this report on a question-by-question basis.
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Forrester’s Business Technographics provides demand-side insight into the priorities, investments, and
customer journeys of business and technology decision-makers and the workforce across the globe.
Forrester collects data insights from qualified respondents in 10 countries spanning the Americas,
Europe, and Asia. Business Technographics uses only superior data sources and advanced data-
cleaning techniques to ensure the highest data quality.
We have illustrated only a portion of the survey results in this document. To inquire about receiving full
data results for an additional fee, please contact data@forrester.com or your Forrester account manager.
Endnotes
1
You can benchmark your company’s infrastructure priorities against other industries and your competitors using the
following report. See the “Strategic Benchmarks 2015: Infrastructure Priorities” Forrester report.
2
For advice on how to use your infrastructure to engage customers, see the “Evolve Your Infrastructure Architecture For
Systems Of Engagement” Forrester report.
3
John Gage, one of the first employees of Sun Microsystems, is credited with coining the tagline “The network is the
computer.” It became a battle cry for the company that contributed extensively to the expansion of the Internet. Wired
magazine profiled Gage in 1996. Source: Spencer Reiss, “Power To The People,” Wired Magazine, December 1, 1996
(http://www.wired.com/1996/12/esgage/).
4
I&O organizations will be moving traffic that crosses 10 GbE, 40 GbE, and 100 GbE LAN links between servers out to
wide-area networks. For more on component-based service designs, see the “Service Design Is Your New Approach
To Infrastructure” Forrester report.
5
In this context, hot and cold infrastructure refers to multiple production sites maintained in an active-passive
configuration for disaster recovery purposes.
6
A cross-connection is a connection scheme between cabling runs, subsystems, and equipment using patch cords or
jumpers that attach to connecting hardware on each end.
7
Source: Melissa Hellmann, “Google Is Investing in a Superfast Fiber-Optic Cable Across the Pacific,” Time Magazine,
August 13, 2014 (http://time.com/3106467/google-cable-system-faster-transpacific-nec-telecom-infrastructure/).
8
Noise from neighbors can be traffic from another application or client leveraging the same link. Since Ethernet is about
who comes first, network resources can be taken up by another application.
9
SLAs can be associated with each component of the service — some of the cloud providers offer SLAs for port
uptime, while carriers and colocation providers offer SLAs for the transport lines.
10
Malicious activity can occur from multiple areas. If the traffic is being tunneled, security devices won’t be able to
inspect. Best practice is for each traffic to be encrypted and encrypted by the same company and organization so due
diligence can occur on it.
11
Cross-connects are typically found in the backbone of switch or router chassis. They connect the connectivity
modules. This is analogous to connecting a bunch of stackable switches together versus using a switch chassis.
12
For more information on AWS direct-connect pricing, check out the company’s website. Source: “AWS Direct
Connect,” Amazon Web Services (http://aws.amazon.com/directconnect/).
13
For more information on connection types and use cases associated with each, see the “Beware The Pitfalls Within
Networking For Hybrid Cloud” Forrester report.

February 17, 2016
18
14
The number of companies using multiple types of clouds and the number of developers building apps on those clouds
are already high and have been steadily growing, with no sign that those trends will reverse. For more information, see
the “Vendor Landscape: Hybrid Cloud Management Solutions” Forrester report.
15
For more information on the growth of service marketplaces, see the “Brief: Service Marketplaces Create A Hub For
Your Hybrid Ecosystem” Forrester report.
16
Source: Forrester’s Global Business Technographics Infrastructure Survey, 2015.
17
For the latest trends on SaaS adoption and use, see the “Application Adoption Trends 2015: The SaaS Boom
Continues As Businesses Demand Agility” Forrester report.
18
Bringing multiple providers together under one roof can help CIOs build cloud-centric ecosystems that connect
employees, partners, and customers in real time. These ecosystems can help your organization simplify engagement
models, enable new sources of value and build smarter processes from aggregated cross platform traffic and
analytics. See the “Cloud Evolves From Point Solution To Strategic Enabler Of The New Connected Economy”
Forrester report.
19
For more on SaaS integration methods, see the “Options For Integrating SaaS Applications” Forrester report.
20
This report describes the current state of cloud brokering platforms and services. See the “Brief: Cloud Broker
Solutions Emerge But Remain Fragmented” Forrester report.
21
The following report explains how these hybrid cloud management solutions are expanding brokering capabilities. See
the “Vendor Landscape: Hybrid Cloud Management Solutions” Forrester report.

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