5 IT Predictions for Digital

Business in 2019
November 12, 2018

While digital transformation has the potential to dramatically

accelerate long-term business performance, the truth is that we are
deep into the digital awkward years. Though the promise of digital is
full of new possibilities, most companies are currently experiencing
the growing pains of hybrid IT complexity.

Todayʼs businesses see digital technologies that need to be

seamlessly integrated with legacy IT infrastructures to optimize
business processes, agility and scale. They anticipate an increasing
number of connected-devices at the edge generating mountains of
data that will expand their organizationʼs threat landscape, while
data security and compliance requirements continue to increase.

https://blog.equinix.com/blog/2018/11/12/5-it-predictions-for-digital-business-in-2019/ 31/12/18, 4C34 pm

Page 1 of 8
 At Equinix, we have a unique perspective on these dynamics and a
special view into whatʼs coming next. For more than 20 years we
have listened closely to our customersʼ digital challenges and
dreams and innovated to solve and enable them. Today this track
record has put us front and center in the digital journeys of nearly
10,000 customers all over the world, as enterprises and service
providers tap into the power of our business and IT ecosystems and
build their digital-ready infrastructures on our global
interconnection platform.

We are working with our customers around the globe to build the
data center of the future, blazing the trail for next-generation
interconnection and innovation, including emerging security, data
and application infrastructure services. And as business and
technology leaders move closer to another year of high stakes
digital transformations and the big IT decisions that power them,
weʼre taking a closer look at the technologies that will make the
biggest digital business impact in 2019.

Prediction #1: Paving a Path to the Promise of 5G

Tomorrowʼs high-speed wireless networks will accelerate todayʼs
network transformation

Nearly every industry has the potential to benefit from the endless
possibilities of 5G, the next evolution of wireless network
architectures. 5G is not only about faster data connections and

https://blog.equinix.com/blog/2018/11/12/5-it-predictions-for-digital-business-in-2019/ 31/12/18, 4C34 pm

Page 2 of 8
 better online experiences, itʼs about rethinking whatʼs possible.
Futuristic visions of smart cities, driverless cars and remote, robotic
surgeries suddenly seem within reach.

McKinsey doesnʼt expect large-scale 5G deployment until early

2020. First, enterprises must tackle the network transformation that
5G requires.[i]This includes creating infrastructures at the edge that
can truly leverage 5Gʼs fiber-like speeds and handle latency-
sensitive applications consistently and reliably. Existing mobile
networks will need to be re-architected and rebuilt throughout the
enterprise.

We anticipate that our customers will increase their 5G investments

significantly in 2019 to repurpose their existing cellular
infrastructures and build new edge architectures for hosting 5G
networks, which will include cloud radio networks. Performance and
cost optimization will be critical to set the stage for 5G and we see
network carriers starting to capitalize on disaggregated, open-
source-based commodity networking hardware and virtual wireless
networking stacks.

5 IT Predictions for Digital Business in 2019 from Equinix

Prediction #2: Riding the Rise of Distributed Artificial

Intelligence Architectures

Next-gen artificial intelligence (AI) architectures will break free from

centralized locations

AI will continue to make its way into our business and personal lives,
driving productivity in unprecedented ways. According to PwC
research, AI will spur global GDP to grow 14% by 2030 to the tune
of $15.7 trillion.[ii]

https://blog.equinix.com/blog/2018/11/12/5-it-predictions-for-digital-business-in-2019/ 31/12/18, 4C34 pm

Page 3 of 8
 As more data gets generated, processed and analyzed at the edge,
we expect to see a direct impact on AI architectures. No longer are
AI model building and model inferencing limited to centralized
locations. In 2019, we expect to see more distributed and federated
AI applications at local edge locations, where large amounts of data
are being generated.

Enterprises will need to access more external data to improve the

accuracy of their AI model predictions, which will lead to buying and
selling data in more secure data marketplaces. Enterprises will also
resist getting locked into a single cloud by leveraging AI innovation
in multiple public clouds. Ultimately, the enterprises using next-
generation AI architectures will have to transition to the distributed
model of multiple data centers.

Prediction #3: “Un-Blocking” the Chain

A “network of networks” will mature blockchain for greater business
security and monetization

As we predicted last year, private blockchain networks made

significant headway in 2018 as enterprises began attempting to
capitalize on their speed, low cost and security benefits. The
relentless surge of data breaches made this innovative approach to
verifying identity and protecting privacy a game changer—
especially in the financial services industry.

More of the worldʼs largest clouds, consulting companies and

enterprises are moving ahead to solve real business problems using
blockchain. By 2022, IDCpredicts that blockchain technology
investments will reach $11.7 billion.[iii]

In 2019, we expect to see more enterprises joining multiple

blockchain networks, particularly from the supply chain, finance,

https://blog.equinix.com/blog/2018/11/12/5-it-predictions-for-digital-business-in-2019/ 31/12/18, 4C34 pm

Page 4 of 8
 government and healthcare industries. Ultimately, this convergence
will create a “network of networks” that spurs new opportunities
and demands for business and IT leaders. They will be looking for
ways to leverage blockchain networks when business-critical
application performance and real-time transaction updates are non-
negotiable. And they will need to integrate multiple blockchain
networks with their legacy applications, making blockchain
gateways increasingly common in 2019.

Prediction #4: Maneuvering the Data Privacy Maze

Changing data protection laws and heightened privacy concerns will

inspire more progressive and distributed security processes

The global enterprise shift to the cloud is leading to further scrutiny

around company and customer data protection and sovereignty
practices. Since the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) put
sweeping data privacy restrictions into law this year, many other
countriesʼ government agencies have followed Europeʼs lead in
crafting stricter data privacy regulations. Weʼre seeing more
enterprises and SaaS providers deploying mini-clouds in multiple
regions to maintain local data residence and compliance
regulations. At the same time, theyʼll require distributed data
management architectures that support global network and data
fabrics to coherently manage these distributed cloud environments
and integrate them into existing IT infrastructures.

To contain data privacy breaches and keep control over their data,
in 2019 we predict enterprises will focus on new data management
techniques such as homomorphic encryption that allows
computations to be done on encrypted data without requiring
access to the data security key.

https://blog.equinix.com/blog/2018/11/12/5-it-predictions-for-digital-business-in-2019/ 31/12/18, 4C34 pm

Page 5 of 8
 And new approaches that allow consumers to bring algorithms (e.g.,
financial, risk, security analytics) to where the providerʼs data is
located (private or neutral colocation data centers) and apply them
against the data without unencrypting it will also enter the market in
2019. This year, we introduced a hardware security module (HSM)-
based virtualization technology, Equinix SmartKey™. It is a cloud-
agnostic, HSM-as-a-service at Equinix that keeps data encryption
keys separate from the data that is stored on-premises or in the
cloud, preventing service providers or bad actors from “peeking
into” a companyʼs data. Equinix SmartKey plays a critical role in
ensuring the security of data access across hybrid/multicloud
infrastructures.

Prediction #5: Tapping Interconnection to Tame Cloud

Complexity
Hybrid multicloud environments willincrease the relevance of
interconnection

Private cloud providers are taking some pages out of the public
cloud playbook and working to ease cloud deployment and
management, while making it more advantageous for enterprises to
deploy these solutions in third-party locations. At the same time,
the maturation of virtualization/container technology and the
standardization of container formats (e.g., Docker) and
orchestration technology (e.g., Kubernetes) are increasing
hybrid/multicloud environments as the enterprise architecture of
choice.

More than 80% of companies are running multicloud environments

with up to five different cloud platforms, according to RightScale.
[iv]To maintain flexibility and choose the right cloud for the right job,
enterprises are increasingly avoiding single cloud provider lock-in.

https://blog.equinix.com/blog/2018/11/12/5-it-predictions-for-digital-business-in-2019/ 31/12/18, 4C34 pm

Page 6 of 8
 For example, they want to be able to store private data on-premises
or in neutral colocation data centers while accessing compute
services or applications from multiple public clouds.
Hybrid/multicloud infrastructures are also driving the demand for
greater private interconnection between enterprises and cloud and
IT providers, with Interconnection Bandwidth projected to grow 98%
annually between 2017 and 2021, according to the Global
Interconnection Index, a market study published by Equinix.

As more enterprises explore SaaS, IaaS and PaaS solutions from

multiple cloud providers, their cloud architectures are becoming
infinitely more complex. And with greater complexity comes greater
concerns about the security, integration and management of
hybrid/multicloud architectures, particularly at the edge. This is why
weʼve continued to innovate our Equinix Cloud Exchange
Fabric™(ECX Fabric™) interconnection solution to meet our
customersʼ cloud complexity challenges. ECX Fabric is designed for
scalability, agility and connectivity over a self-service portal or API
where through a single physical port, enterprises and services
providers can directly, securely and dynamically connect distributed
infrastructures and digital ecosystems on Platform Equinix® via
global, software-defined interconnection. ECX Fabric also enables
remote access to different cloud platforms across multiple metros.

Looking forward to a more interconnected future

Rapid technology advances will continue to open the door to greater

digital business speed, efficiency, security, intelligence and scale.
But without proper IT infrastructures that are conceived and built to
leverage interconnection to simplify complexity and integrate digital
technologies from the start, organizations will not be able to realize
their full benefits.

https://blog.equinix.com/blog/2018/11/12/5-it-predictions-for-digital-business-in-2019/ 31/12/18, 4C34 pm

Page 7 of 8
 Are you prepared to leverage next-generation innovation and
interconnection to make your IT infrastructure digital-ready to
succeed as a digital business? To learn more about how your
company can harness private interconnection to reach everywhere,
interconnect everyone and integrate everything, check out our
Platform Equinix Vision paper. And watch this space for future blogs
that explore each of these predictions in detail to help you make
your way out of the digital awkward years and into a successful
2019!

Be sure to check out our other Predictions 2019 blog posts:

5 IT Predictions for Digital Business in 2019

Paving a Path to the Promise of 5G
Riding the Rise of Distributed Artificial Intelligence
Architectures
Un-blocking the Chain

[i]McKinsey, Are You Ready for 5G?, February, 2018.

[ii]PwC, AI to drive GDP gains of $15.7 trillion with productivity,

personalisation improvements, June 27, 2017.

[iii]Blockchain: Worldwide Technology Market Update and Spending

Outlook, September 2018, Doc #US44268418, IDC.

[iv]RightScale, RightScale 2018 State of the Cloud Report.

https://blog.equinix.com/blog/2018/11/12/5-it-predictions-for-digital-business-in-2019/ 31/12/18, 4C34 pm

Page 8 of 8