How fast do businesses digitally expand today vs pre-pandemic?

Businesses with a digital-first strategy grow 4x faster than pre-pandemic levels.

An annual market study from Equinix revealed that the digital growth in companies is four times more than that of the pre-pandemic levels.

Digitally mature businesses in the Asia Pacific region were able to deploy their digital infrastructure to multiple regions, expand to multiple edge locations, and integrate multiple clouds in six months. This is faster compared to the two years required time from before. 

According to the study, overall interconnection bandwidth, the measure of private connectivity for the transfer of data between organisations, is expected to reach 21,485 or more terabits per second, per year by 2024. This represents a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 44%.

Interconnection bandwidth in APAC is also expected to increase by 46% CAGR, reaching 6,002 TeraBits Per Second or Tbps by 2024. This, in turn, would make up 28% of global interconnection bandwidth. 

By comparison, Singapore is keeping pace with other core metros in the region with an expected interconnection bandwidth capacity of 42% CAGR in 2024.

Additional insights from the study also point to an estimated 30% of enterprise infrastructure being close to the edge in terms of data consumption.

Digital leaders also see 10 times as many instances of interconnection amongst partners.

Industry-wise, the financial services sector is expected to deploy more than 50% of Enterprise interconnection bandwidth. This is followed by the manufacturing sector as the second-largest industry.

The public sector, healthcare and life sciences, industrial services and transportation industries, meanwhile, are seen to experience the fastest growth at a 48% or more CAGR from 2020 to 2024 globally.