Equinix, the global interconnection and data center company, has published its 2016 industry predictions. Ihab Tarazi wrote the company’s expectations for the Internet industry next year, pointing out that the industry will go greener. There will be major changes in the coming year driven by the IT transformation.

In terms of the “greener” opinion, Ihab Tarazi wrote: “The Internet will get greener in 2016, even as the number of global Internet users nears 50% of the world’s population. The continuous expansion of our digital lives requires huge amounts of electricity, particularly for the data center operators that house the world’s Internet infrastructure and serve as catalysts of the digital economy. And they’re aware their energy choices have a big impact. In a recent survey, more than 8-in-10 North American data center operators said they know they need to consider renewable energy to meet future energy demands. That demand will translate into action in 2016, as more enterprises adopt renewable energy principles and push for changes to make data centers more energy-efficient.”

Internet industry leaders such as Google, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft have been transforming their energy mix to use more renewable energy resources. They are investing billions of dollars to develop, deploy and purchase renewable electricity and generating facilities around the world as most of them aim to operate 100% by clean energy in next decade.

With the U.S. government decided to extend the Investment Tax Credit (ITC), it is foreseeable that the grand investors will invest more in developing renewable resources so that the Internet industry is highly likely to go greener year by year.

The other expectations mentioned in the article include:

• Digital commerce will be transformed
• The Internet of Things (IoT) will dramatically impact IT networks
• Interconnection will remove significant barriers to IT growth

In addition, Ihab Tarazi projects that 84% of all companies worldwide will be interconnected enterprises by 2017 so the rising enterprise appetite for interconnection will affect enterprise connectively strategies by aspects in 2016 as following:

• Make my connections direct: Content providers will increasingly bypass the Internet to meet surging network bandwidth demand
• Make my cloud connections multiple: Enterprises will continue to shift to multi-cloud for cost savings
• Make my cloud connections multiple: Enterprises will continue to shift to multi-cloud for cost savings
• Make my connections secure: Cyber-security will fuel increased interconnection adoption

(Photo Credit: Equinix)