“Networks evolve because of traffic. Cloud computing did not change how traffic flows from user to server. AI is fundamentally different because of East-West communication. Practitioners need to understand how to deploy new designs to utilize hardware efficiently and why old-school thinking will only lead to pain down the road.”
AI usage has changed traffic patterns in the enterprise data center. Traditional user-focused flows to servers (north-south) have given way to server-to-server traffic (east-west). By the end of 2026, east-west traffic will account for 90% of all data center traffic flows.
Three primary factors have caused the shift:
The massive traffic increase has forced organizations to rethink their architecture and develop new use cases that optimize hardware to best serve the systems that require priority.
The vision behind everything in Futurum’s Custom Research practice is this: research should show you what is happening, what comes next, and what to do about it. It should be personal to each audience, easy for people to grasp, and structured so LLMs can reason over it accurately. And it should be fast and turnkey; you want answers now, not another project to carry for quarters.
Whether you are defining business, channel, or go-to-market strategy; evaluating vendors or justifying ROI; or commissioning research to fill an emerging market need, we have your back, with a program that answers your questions with the objectivity and credibility to drive real decisions.
To do it, we bring unmatched data to bear: Futurum research, surveys, and market projections; validated market feeds; ETR’s 15 years of insight from 10,000 technology decision-makers; G2’s buyer and user data; and what our analysts hear every day. Add leading primary collection, from AI-moderated voice interviews to surveys and analyst-led interviews, all turnkey, and every project comes out credible, nuanced, and actionable.
And we don’t just drop the results in your lap. For internal work, we provide analyst-led sessions, interactive dashboards, and a range of formats. For market-facing work, Futurum delivers turnkey activation and amplification that actually gets seen, by people and by LLMs, through our media and share of voice. This is research that moves decisions and markets.
We will meet you wherever you are, from a fast-turn brief to a multi-year program, and shape the work to your goals, timeline, and budget. The right program for your moment.
If any of this is useful, I would love to talk.
VP, Custom Research · The Futurum Group
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