The speed of light is pegged at 186,000 miles per second. According to NASA, if you traveled at the speed of light around the earth you could circumnavigate the equator 7.5 times in a second. By comparison, if you’re doing 500 miles per hour in a jet, you are moving at a tortoise pace and it will take you almost 50 hours nonstop to circle the planet just once.

We don’t have the capability to measure the speed of business the same way. However, the pace of digital transformation is only accelerating. The comparison of light speed to jet speed reminds us that speed is always a relative measure. If your competitor can move at the speed of light, you will not be able to compete at the speed of a jet plane.

In this first of a two-part blog series exploring the value of a direct Fiber connection in this time of digital transformation, I will highlight the top advantages of on-net connectivity in our dynamic times.

The speed of light is relevant to business because data is constantly flowing through an organization. The data moving through your enterprise is doing many things at once:

• Delivering cloud-hosted applications to customers
• Backing up data
• Sharing large files, like video, to teams around the world
• Running security protocols, logging system anomalies

And this list goes on to include seemingly mundane things like approval routing and other tasks that keep lines of business operating. In today’s hybrid IT architectures and decentralized organizations all this data is connecting people and systems in far-flung places via the Network. The bandwidth of the network is critical to the functioning of the modern enterprise. With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), Big Data Analytics and the Internet of Things (IoT), the amount of data the network has to handle will soar from its already significant level.

The speed of light makes Fiber Optic Networks the fastest available. Adding a direct connection to a fiber optic network gives access to additional capabilities that reflect the needs of our modern world.

• Increased Performance and Reliability: Fiber optic networks offer faster provisioning, higher availability and greater reliability as more of your business needs can be served by one network with fewer connections. If an issue occurs, your connection to a single vendor and network will increase the speed and efficiency in identifying the issue and reduce repair and restoration time.
• Security: Carrier-class fiber is secure from the start. It has to be because such public services as the Internet itself runs on it. The bandwidth available also allows greater flexibility for layering security services on top of a rock-solid foundation.
• Reach: Global enterprises need global connections, whether that’s within the four walls of the organization or to customers located around the world.
• Scalability: Network bandwidth is almost unlimited. So, it’s easy to upgrade service speeds as needed for new organizational needs such as video, IoT, and AI. All that data can be run smoothly on the same network.

The speed of light is a constant in the universe. Other universal truisms seem relevant as we think where business is heading:

• We will create more and more data
• We will need to move faster and faster

In the next blog in this series, I will address how the expanded CenturyLink network can aid businesses’ transitions to a direct fiber optic connection.

Contact us to talk to your local sales rep about the advantages of going on-net and the new connections you can make when your business executes at the speed of light.

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