How Phoenix Businesses Can Evolve Their IT Architecture and Overcome Data Gravity

Anyone paying attention to real estate investing knows that desert cities across the west are growing at a rapid rate. Key amongst them is Phoenix, the digital heartbeat of the southwestern United States. A prime location with inexpensive land and power, safety from the most common natural disaster types endemic to this continent, and a cost-saving tax incentive, Phoenix is a hotspot for IT architecture such as corporate application hosting and disaster recovery. With this concentration of enterprises comes challenges with Data Gravity.

The Phoenix market plays a key role in numerous data-heavy market sectors, such as aerospace and defense, bioscience and healthcare, and financial services, among others. Overcoming Data Gravity, as well as high demand for network and cloud interconnectivity, are key challenges for these industries. Lack of direct connections can create network and data restrictions that impede business functions that rely on real-time processing.

The good news is that nearly every hyperscale cloud platform has a presence in Phoenix, meaning with the right data center environment, the entire cloud can be at your organization’s fingertips. The advantage of this proximity is robust interconnection opportunities for private and hybrid cloud deployments. Leveraging the cloud can add much needed flexibility and scalability to enterprise infrastructure, allowing organizations to adapt rapidly to changing market demands, while controlling costs.

With many enterprises looking to move out of California to escape high energy costs, Phoenix is looking like an oasis of IT architecture in the desert.

Rapid growth means Data Gravity challenges abound

Data growth has been skyrocketing over the last decade and is accelerating at exponential rates. The CAGR through 2024 forecasts that the data created over the next three years will be more than the data created over the previous thirty years. The data growth for Phoenix alone is forecasted at 137% CAGR. This incredible growth is fueled by enterprises as well as the ever-expanding Internet of Things (IoT) and the proliferation of connected devices, such as personal wearables and smart home devices. In the enterprise, the expansion of remote work has moved incredible amounts of additional business data online at a record pace. Not to mention the massive aggregation of customer data that powers next-generation data-driven decision making, often powered by AI.

This growth trend is global but we see high concentrations of Data Gravity at the major enterprise centers – where companies are located and where they process their data. Not just any IT architecture can help an organization successfully navigate these deep data waters. Many enterprises struggle with too much distance between where data is created and where it is processed. Issues with bandwidth and latency arise at every interconnection and exchange.

So how can enterprises continue to invest and grow within these data-heavy sectors while maintaining positive customer experiences and internal operational efficiency? You need to assess your entire network and proactively build your business presence and data processing near centers of data exchange.

Leveraging the Phoenix metro’s IT architecture potential

To more clearly measure and understand Data Gravity intensity through data creation, aggregation, and exchange, Digital Realty developed the Data Gravity Index^TM. The impacts of Data Gravity, left unmanaged, can cause an enterprise's data management to become out of control, leading to missed opportunities and diminished customer experience. Understanding the impacts of Data Gravity can better help you plan your IT architecture to future-proof your business. Not only will this allow you to better support your current lines of business but give you the flexibility to seize new opportunities as they arise.

As a business leader, not only do you need to understand the impacts of Data Gravity, but you need solutions that support the increasing digitization of workflows and the increase in enterprise data exchange. So how can you leverage what Phoenix has to offer in order to solve your Data Gravity challenges?

Phoenix presents itself as a prime solutions-making location due to existing and growing investment in prime industries, as well as being a key data center location choice. Digital Realty has responded to Phoenix’s leading growth in disaster recovery and corporate application hosting with our state-of-the-art Phoenix campuses. These facilities qualify tenants for an exemption on Phoenix’s combined tax rate of 8.6%, representing a significant cost reduction on infrastructure deployments in the metro, reducing the barrier to entry.

Our Phoenix campuses feature the data-centric architecture of PlatformDIGITAL^® and allow you to take full advantage of our Pervasive Datacenter Architecture (PDx™) in a location primed with accessible and plentiful power, extreme reliability, and direct interconnections with all major cloud providers. Not to mention that we have the #1 interconnection data center facility at our 120 East Van Buren campus. Place your business and your data on-ramps side-by-side and reach levels of data exchange you never thought possible with fiber crossroads on almost every national backbone. Never worry about outgrowing our presence in this key metro – with an abundance of land available for low-cost investment, Digital Realty will be able to continue our growth in Phoenix while passing that affordability on to our tenants. Many other major names in tech are following suit, making investments in the metro more valuable (and strategic) than ever.

Today’s enterprises demand built-for-purpose infrastructure that is flexible and reliable and can easily adapt to new demands. The Phoenix metro boasts a robust interconnectivity landscape that is easy to leverage with PlatformDIGITAL^®. Never has purpose-built infrastructure been this connected, flexible, cost-effective, and reliable. With the right data center investment you can overcome Data Gravity and grow your business to new heights.

There is no time like the present to invest in all that Phoenix and Digital Realty together have to offer.

More information on PlatformDIGITAL^® in Phoenix

For more details on Digital Realty’s Phoenix metro connective campus download a copy of our Metro Brief. Please contact us with any questions.

To learn more about Data Gravity and PlatformDIGITAL^®, watch a short video here.