Kicking off the PTC’19 Center Stage presentations, Charles Meyers, CEO & President of Equinix, proclaims digital transformation is fundamentally changing every industry across the planet, contending it’s enabled through interconnected digital infrastructure at the digital edge.

Business leaders should be both excited and productively paranoid about the pace of innovation and digital disruption in today’s world, and always asking “are we changing as fast as the world around us?” That is a humbling reality facing every industry, and successful businesses are the ones that will evolve at pace, according to Meyers. To thrive in a disruptive, cloud-first world, service providers must remain focused on their distinctive value but evolve how they deliver that value. 

Meyers articulates the trend of architectures for networks and ICT platforms are becoming more global, highly distributed, cloud-first, hybrid, and multicloud. Equinix itself uses about a dozen hybrid, multicloud architectures, according to Meyers, explaining that architecture is best suited to reside at the interconnected edge in a cloud-first world. He describes how performance, cost, security, compliance, and flexibility are key components to make that viable.

How is digital transformation reshaping the nature of interconnection?  Meyers points to a time-line over the past two decades as moving progressively from changes in networks to financial services, enterprise, content and digital media, and now to highly interconnected ecosystems in cloud and IT services.

How are leading service providers adapting to the digital imperative? Meyers explains that success hinges on adjusting to a cloud-first mindset, cultivating ecosystems, and unlocking value at the edge.

If you missed any part of this presentation, you can view it in its entirety by watching the video.