Why It Has Become the Foundation of Modern, Secure, Global Business

Part 1 of our Connectivity Series

Connectivity is probably the least glamorous topic in IT, and that’s exactly the problem

No one gets excited about access lines, routing policies, backbone SLAs or ISP contracts. They are considered plumbing: necessary, but not strategic.

Until they fail.

When electricity goes out, everything stops. The blackout in parts of Portugal and Spain in 2025 was a powerful reminder that infrastructure is invisible right up to the moment it isn’t. Connectivity works the same way. It underpins your cloud access, your SaaS applications, your SASE inspection, your remote workforce. And unlike a blackout, when connectivity degrades, the impact is gradual. Slow applications, jittery calls, security inspection that adds latency instead of confidence. People blame the tooling. But the real issue is often one layer below.

In this three-part series, we clarify why connectivity is no longer “just” the network, but the foundation of SASE, cloud transformation and secure global operations.

In Part 1, I’ll lay out why most organizations must think about connectivity no longer matches the reality of what they’re asking to do.

Connectivity ≠ The Network of Yesterday

For many years, enterprise connectivity meant one thing: connecting branch offices to headquarters via MPLS.

That model no longer reflects reality. Today’s enterprise network must support:

• Globally distributed users and sites
• Hybrid and remote workforces
• Cloud-first and SaaS-heavy architectures
• Real-time collaboration tools
• High-bandwidth workloads such as AI, IoT and media processing
• Distributed security inspection and enforcement through SASE

Connectivity is no longer a static pipe between two fixed locations. It has become a dynamic, multi-directional traffic system where users, applications and data continuously move between offices, clouds, production environments and remote locations.

Connectivity today determines:

• Application performance and latency
• End-user experience
• The effectiveness of security controls
• Business continuity during outages
• The feasibility of global expansion

It is no longer a technical utility. It is a business enabler, and increasingly, the layer that determines whether your SASE and cloud investments actually deliver on their promise

Why Connectivity Has Become Mission-Critical

1. Global Footprints Require Intelligent Connectivity Design

Most organizations operate in a highly hybrid IT environment. A typical enterprise setup includes:

• Offices, headquarters and production plants
• On-prem data centers
• Public cloud platforms such as Azure or AWS
• Private cloud environments
• Globally distributed SaaS applications

Applications are no longer centralized. A user in Singapore may access a private cloud platform hosted in Frankfurt. A production plant in Mexico may replicate data to a cloud region in the US. A finance team in London may rely on systems hosted across multiple availability zones.

Without carefully designed connectivity, these flows quickly become fragile. If the underlying connectivity layer is unstable, poorly sourced or architected without understanding application patterns, everything above it, including SASE and security services, will struggle.

Connectivity is the foundation that makes these international, hybrid business models work.

2. Hybrid and Remote Work Redefined Network Boundaries

Remote and hybrid work have fundamentally changed traffic patterns. Employees now connect from home networks, shared workspaces or mobile environments that IT cannot directly control. Contractors and third-party suppliers require secure access to internal systems. Video conferencing and collaboration tools generate constant high-bandwidth traffic.

Even if you cannot control the user’s home access line, you can control how traffic is routed, optimized and prioritized across your backbone and cloud connections.

When connectivity is poorly designed:

• SaaS applications feel slow
• Video calls suffer from jitter
• Security inspection introduces noticeable latency
• Users lose trust in IT

When connectivity is intelligently architected:

• Cloud access feels local
• Traffic avoids congested paths
• Performance remains stable even under load

Connectivity has become a direct user experience issue.

3. Bandwidth Demand Is Exploding, and It’s Structural

The growth in bandwidth demand is not anecdotal. It is measurable, global and accelerating.

According to TeleGeography’s 2025 State of the Network, global internet bandwidth rose by 22% in 2024 alone, continuing a multi-year growth trajectory. Total international bandwidth now stands at 1,479 Tbps, representing a four-year CAGR of 25%. In fact, international bandwidth has more than doubled since 2020.

Even more striking: aggregate long-haul bandwidth demand has more than tripled between 2019 and 2023, reaching 5 Pbps. Most global regions recorded compound annual growth rates of 35–40% during that period.

This is structural growth, driven by forces that aren’t going away.

• Enterprise-wide video collaboration and real-time communication
• Cloud-first architectures and SaaS-heavy application portfolios
• AI training and inference workloads
• IoT telemetry from globally distributed production sites
• Large design files, video assets and engineering datasets
• Cross-continental backup and disaster recovery replication

At the same time, cloud infrastructure continues to expand at scale. In 2023 alone, 23 new cloud regions were launched globally, with Asia and Europe accounting for nearly two-thirds of all in-service cloud zones worldwide. Every new region increases the complexity of traffic flows across continents.

The consequence: connectivity today must deliver predictable performance across latency, jitter, packet loss, and throughput, across hybrid SD-WAN, internet-first architectures, and multi-cloud environments. More traffic is only part of the story. The real challenge is that workloads are more distributed, more latency-sensitive, and more cross-regionally dependent than ever.

The Enterprise Economics of Connectivity Transformation

Beyond macro growth trends, enterprise WAN architectures are also undergoing measurable economic transformation.

Analysis from TeleGeography’s WAN Manager Survey – conducted in collaboration with Open Systems – shows that moving from traditional dual MPLS architectures to hybrid and internet-first WAN designs can:

• Increase total WAN bandwidth by 61%
• Reduce cost per Mbps by 45%

As can be easily seen in the executive infographic, this demonstrates that connectivity transformation is not just a technical modernization, it is a business case.

The takeaway: organizations that still treat connectivity as a static procurement decision are building their cloud and security strategies on unstable foundation. Organizations that treat connectivity as a static and local procurement decision will struggle to keep up. Connectivity is no longer about “being online.” It is about sustaining high-performance, secure, globally distributed business operations: reliably, predictably and at scale.

Why Many Organizations Still Get Connectivity Wrong

Despite its strategic importance, connectivity is often treated as a procurement exercise rather than a design discipline.

1. Treating Symptoms Instead of Root Causes

Common complaints include:

• Poor SaaS performance
• High latency to cloud applications
• Random performance degradation
• Unstable site-to-site connections

The reaction often involves:

• Adding more security tools
• Increasing bandwidth without analysis
• Tweaking SD-WAN policies
• Introducing additional firewalls

But frequently, the root cause lies deeper:

• Inadequate last-mile redundancy
• Poor ISP peering
• Congested middle-mile internet paths
• No backbone optimization
• Fragmented provider sourcing

If the underlay is flawed, the overlay cannot fix it.

A company that deploys a cloud-based SASE inspection layer without addressing backbone underneath may find that performance gets worse, not better.  The SASE framework isn’t the problem, the foundation is.

2. Designing Connectivity in Isolation from Business Strategy

Connectivity decisions are often disconnected from:

• Application architecture
• Disaster recovery planning
• Production downtime tolerance
• HR policies for hybrid work
• M&A integration speed
• Regional expansion strategy

A production site that cannot tolerate downtime for more than 30 minutes requires a fundamentally different connectivity architecture than a small administrative office.

A cloud-first organization requires local breakout and backbone optimization as well as solid disaster recovery plans, not simply expanding bandwidth on the direct cloud access lines.

Connectivity must reflect:

• Who communicates with whom
• From where
• Using which applications
• Under which performance requirements

Otherwise, the result is predictable: frustrated users and costly outages.

3. Ignoring the Security-Connectivity Interdependency

Security and connectivity can no longer be designed separately.

Where you place:

• Secure Web Gateways
• ZTNA enforcement points
• Firewall services
• CASB controls

directly influences traffic flow and bandwidth requirements.

For example, if security inspection forces traffic through distant nodes without backbone optimization, performance degradation becomes inevitable.

SASE promises the convergence of networking and security. That promise is real, but only delivers when the connectivity foundation is stable, well-sourced, and designed as part of the architecture from the start. Connectivity is not separate from SASE. It’s the layer SASE depends on.

What Effective Connectivity Architecture Looks Like

So what does modern connectivity architecture actually look like? It combines flexibility, performance, and operational simplicity, designed to support the SASE and cloud strategies running on top of it.

It typically includes:

Internet-First Tiered Design
Instead of relying entirely on MPLS, enterprises differentiate site types and assign appropriate connectivity models. Business-critical sites may retain higher redundancy. Smaller sites may rely on optimized DIA or broadband.

Multi-Provider Sourcing
Rather than depending on a single carrier, organizations use best-of-breed local providers. This improves resilience and cost efficiency, but increases operational complexity.

Intelligent Backbone Connectivity
A managed backbone avoids unreliable middle-mile internet paths and provides predictable latency and packet loss characteristics.

End-to-End SLAs
Not just access SLAs, but measurable quality guarantees across the entire path.

The TeleGeography analysis clearly demonstrates that hybrid and internet-first WAN designs can increase available bandwidth while reducing cost per Mbps and modernizing the architecture.

Connectivity transformation is therefore not only a technical upgrade, it is a business case.

Connectivity as a Managed Service, Not a Coordination Problem

Modern connectivity sourcing has become highly fragmented. Enterprises increasingly rely on a mix of telcos, ISPs, aggregators and alternative providers.

Flexibility increases, but so does complexity.

Open Systems Global Connectivity Services address this challenge by combining:

• Managed last-mile sourcing in 180+ countries
• A high-performance global WAN backbone with 500+ PoPs
• End-to-end SLAs on availability and traffic quality
• 24×7 Line Operations Service
• Unified contracting and accountability

The approach integrates:

• Technology: backbone and last-mile
• People: designated connectivity teams
• Process: sourcing, delivery and operations under one accountable model

The result: connectivity becomes a managed service, that supports SASE and security end-to-end, not a vendor coordination exercise that sits outside of it.

Connectivity Is the Foundation of SASE

SASE architectures rely on:

• Distributed security inspection
• Dynamic path selection
• Local internet breakout
• Global backbone performance

Without resilient and intelligently designed connectivity:

• ZTNA cannot provide seamless user experience
• SWG introduces latency
• Cloud performance degrades
• Security policies create friction

Before optimizing the overlay, you must design the underlay. Connectivity is the foundation upon which SASE stands.

Conclusion: The First Step of Network Transformation

Connectivity is the layer that determines whether your SASE architecture performs, your cloud strategy delivers, and your global operations hold together. It deserves the same strategic platform as the security and cloud investments that depend on it.

It is:

• The enabler of cloud-first strategy
• The backbone of hybrid work
• The prerequisite for effective SASE
• A driver of application performance
• A determinant of business continuity

In Part 2 of this series, we will explore connectivity specifically in the context of SASE, breaking down how last-mile and backbone connectivity impact each SASE component, with practical examples.

Because without a strong foundation, no architecture remains stable.