White Paper

The new engine of enterprise

Ultra-high-speed data is accelerating business with connectivity that’s built to break through.

Ultra-high-speed data (UHSD) is quickly becoming core infrastructure in enterprise networks.

Enterprises — especially large, multi-site organizations with distributed workforces — have crossed a threshold. Traditional connectivity is struggling to keep up with the rapid pace of cloud adoption, hybrid architectures and data-intensive workloads. Networks need a new breed of connectivity, one that delivers not only speed, but also reliability, scalability and security.

82% of organizations say their on-premises infrastructure is not fully ready to support AI workloads.¹

UHSD is becoming foundational to network modernization. With secure connectivity and speeds up to 400 Gbps, UHSD can power everything from cloud migration to AI deployments. This gives enterprises a real competitive advantage. End users experience less friction, customers enjoy smoother interactions and IT teams can do more with less.

As you consider upgrading your infrastructure to support UHSD, seek out partners that can evolve with you. It’s helpful to understand the popular inflection points that trigger UHSD adoption and how the right managed services provider can ease your transition.

97% of senior IT leaders say a modernized network is critical to rolling out AI, IoT and cloud.²

The cloud is the new default for business

Many enterprises consider themselves cloud-native: Their workflows originate in the cloud by default. The cloud is instantly scalable and can replace aging on-premises systems, helping enterprises avoid large capital expenditures and the risk of hardware failures. Popular cloud-based applications for collaboration, analytics and automation promise productivity gains. Accessible from virtually anywhere, the cloud is also readily available for data backup, enhancing business continuity.

Now integral to so many enterprise workflows, a direct, high-capacity connection to public clouds is vital for users and devices to avoid hitting bottlenecks that slow them down. Further, because enterprises are working across multiple clouds, they need private, high-performance pathways for smooth inter-cloud connectivity.

So, how can enterprise networks facilitate continuous data movement between headquarters, distributed sites, remote workers’ locations, data centers and multiple cloud environments? And how can they do so while continuing to manage security, costs and compliance in a way that also accommodates growth?

UHSD handles more users, devices and data

By providing faster and better connectivity, UHSD can accommodate the growing amount of data and devices in the enterprise. It delivers the high throughput and high bandwidth to support:

Continuous data pipelines for AI and machine learning, business intelligence, digital twins and other simulation and real-time modeling platforms
Video collaboration and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) for remote and hybrid workers
More internal and edge-to-cloud traffic between headquarters, branches, Internet of Things (IoT) devices and cloud workloads
Increasing software as a service (SaaS) and cloud-based analytics
Building ultra-high-speed connections between corporate sites, colocation facilities and cloud-adjacent data centers

When to adopt UHSD: Seven use cases for large businesses

While UHSD can benefit enterprises at any stage, there are common catalysts for adoption. Here are seven scenarios in which UHSD can make a measurable difference.

1. Faster connections to public clouds and inter-cloud connectivity

From data warehouses to popular SaaS applications, the cloud is now home to more data and applications than ever. These are core business systems, and slow connections in public internet routing can quickly lead to bottlenecks and friction anytime a user or device attempts to retrieve data or services from the cloud.

UHSD gives users high-capacity, high-speed on-ramps to public clouds for fast file access and low-latency application usage. It also enables seamless inter-cloud connectivity between public clouds and on-premises servers or data centers. This is critical for hybrid and multicloud architectures. In addition, UHSD can provide a secure connection to public clouds, helping you maintain regulatory compliance by controlling sensitive data flows across the enterprise network.

2. More resilient disaster recovery and business continuity

How quickly an enterprise can recover from a natural disaster, cyberattack or hardware failure will determine how severely the business is impacted. UHSD can support two of the most critical best practices for business continuity: data replication and workload shifting.

Enterprises can prevent data loss and speed recovery time by creating redundant copies of data in multiple locations. UHSD makes it possible to copy large datasets rapidly across sites and regions. This continuous backup enables a shorter recovery point objective (RPO) and a shorter recovery time objective (RTO).

During an outage, an enterprise can shift workloads to alternate locations to keep operations from being interrupted. Because of its speed, UHSD enables fast failover to secondary sites or cloud platforms. This further minimizes downtime in the event of a failure.

52% of senior IT leaders whose organizations experienced recent major network outages say revenue loss was the most significant impact.³

3. More efficient data storage and big data pipelines

Data has long-lasting business value. The more you can store and feed into big data pipelines, the more potential there is to extract insights. By making it more practical and efficient to ingest and process data from digital and physical sources, UHSD can help enterprises pursue a world of new activities related to big data. Data can be used to train and continuously improve custom AI models, conduct long-term forecasting, build lifetime volume models and journey mapping, and create new analytics-driven services and revenue streams. UHSD also helps prevent delays across data warehousing, cloud analytics platforms and continuous backup activities.

4. High bandwidth and ultra-low latency for AI and automation

AI and automation are transforming the enterprise by enabling a host of innovations, from recommendation engines and fraud analytics to predictive maintenance and computer vision. Data transmission is foundational to these new tools and capabilities. When running inference, low-latency data transfer helps ensure the model can provide responses in near real time. When training a custom model, high bandwidth is needed to transfer massive volumes of data. UHSD enables these low-latency networks, supporting real-time responsiveness for automation, robotics and AI workloads.

71% of C-suite leaders say investment in digital tools is their top strategy for managing change.⁴

5. Support for immersive digital experiences and media streaming

Media-rich experiences have always relied on high-throughput connectivity. Today, a customer at a retail store might use augmented reality (AR) to virtually try on an outfit. A technician might use virtual reality (VR) to train safely in what would be a dangerous real-world environment.

These experiences only work if network connections are fast enough to handle continuous rendering of high-resolution video and high-speed input and output. UHSD supports production and distribution pipelines via reliable, low-latency, high-density connectivity. This includes easily enabling 4K and 8K media streaming so that users experience instant start times and stable playback. Furthermore, UHSD provides enough bandwidth to power multiple media streams at once without degrading quality.

6. Speedier transmission of IoT sensor and edge device data

Thousands of IoT and edge devices may be connected to the typical enterprise network, with more joining every day. The number of connected IoT devices is estimated to reach 39 billion by 2030.⁵ Industrial IoT (IIoT) devices, smart facilities and connected healthcare environments are designed to generate continuous data streams. Collecting and processing this data requires stable, high-bandwidth connections to send data to the cloud or on-premises servers and stream it into dashboards or machine learning models. UHSD provides high-capacity backhaul to support the real-time processing of sensor and device data. This includes extremely fast on-ramps to the public cloud as well as optimized connectivity within the local network. By ensuring data can quickly get from sensors and devices to a centralized resource, UHSD enables more insightful, real-time decision-making.

Interrupted connectivity is the top challenge organizations face with their edge infrastructure deployments.⁶

7. High-throughput networking for vendor consolidation and resilience

While most enterprises have outgrown them, many still rely on legacy metro Ethernet WANs for connectivity for on-premises applications. In cloud-first, distributed and real-time environments, enterprises need enough bandwidth to connect every site to a high-speed core and provide direct, high-speed access to cloud services.

By adopting UHSD, enterprises can consolidate multiple metro Ethernet circuits, fiber loops and WAN links into a single unified, high-capacity network backbone. This provides massive throughput to carry all types of traffic for cloud workloads, AI, video conferencing, IoT telemetry and media streaming.

UHSD also brings an opportunity to reduce multi-vendor complexity. Instead of managing multiple metro Ethernet vendors with varying service-level agreements (SLAs) and inconsistent bandwidth tiers, enterprises can consolidate to just one UHSD managed services provider. This results in significantly simpler operations with easier provisioning and unified performance monitoring.

Connectivity challenges in large enterprises

Managing enterprise networks is challenging, and making upgrades can be time-consuming and resource-intensive. The following challenges are common in enterprise-scale organizations.

Working across multiple clouds

Most enterprises have multicloud and hybrid architectures that use different clouds, tools and governance frameworks. Moving data across clouds can be expensive, with truly cohesive inter-cloud connectivity often out of reach.

73% of IT leaders said in 2025 that they’d experienced an increase in cloud architecture service disruptions over the previous 12 months.⁷

Scaling bandwidth without overspending

Legacy systems are straining under the rapidly growing volumes of data that are necessary for advanced analytics, AI and machine learning. Enterprises need cost-effective scaling with predictable pricing models that don’t overextend budgets.

Bridging the gap in skills

Even large enterprise teams often lack current cloud networking expertise. IT skills gaps are an ongoing concern across the board: 76% of technology leaders report gaps in their department, while 87% report difficulty finding skilled candidates.⁸ Compounding the issue, as devices and worksites become more distributed, managing network diversity and uptime becomes increasingly difficult.

Managing security and compliance

Enterprises must protect against a larger attack surface as data moves across clouds and edge locations. Additionally, they need to secure data that’s in motion and segment the network to reduce security gaps, protect against malware or intruders and isolate sensitive systems.

Make progress with a modern connectivity partner

The right managed services provider can help IT leaders improve network reliability and performance, even when they’re up against budget constraints and limited resources. Here’s what to look for in a managed services provider.

High-performance, ultra-reliable infrastructure

Service providers should offer UHSD solutions with options for general and critical applications. They should deliver network diversity and nationwide reach.

Scalable, cloud-ready architectures

Providers should have direct access to major public clouds and cloud-adjacent data centers. You should see an emphasis on inter-cloud connectivity and consistent performance across sites.

Cost-effective managed services

It should be clear how managed network services will reduce complexity, staffing pressures and operational risk. You should also receive expert support that reduces friction across IT teams.

End-to-end accountability

Managed services providers should commit to industry-leading SLAs and proactive monitoring. This gives you a single accountable partner — critical for enterprises with limited resources and high expectations.

Reliable security and compliance

Your network partner should help improve protection against cyberthreats, data breaches and lateral attacks across corporate and cloud environments. They should also provide support for regulatory compliance and industry standards to safeguard sensitive enterprise information.

Spectrum Business^® helps large enterprises compete and innovate

Offering a broad portfolio of high-performance connectivity solutions, Spectrum Business is trusted by many of the world’s leading enterprises to deliver UHSD reliably. Our UHSD solutions support multi-site and distributed enterprise needs and are optimized for public cloud on-ramps, data center connections, hybrid IT environments and large-scale WAN modernization.

Over 90% of Fortune 500 companies rely on Spectrum Business for technology solutions.⁹

Spectrum Business is a winner of the 2025 ATLANTIC-ACM U.S. Business Connectivity Service Provider Excellence Award in the Large Service Providers, Data Value category.¹⁰

With Spectrum Business, your enterprise gets end-to-end managed services for complex networks. This includes expertise in designing customized solutions to match your specific technical and operational requirements and managed services that reduce the workload on your internal IT teams. You can also choose from scalable options with support that range from core operations to mission-critical workloads. Everything is reliable, secure and cost-effective, with performance backed by end-to-end SLAs and full accountability with 100% US-based support, available 24/7. Learn how we can help you modernize your network, so you can compete and innovate in a rapidly changing world.

Learn more