Trading in both Europe and Asia? How well connected are you?

A younger workforce is driving digital transformation across the Asia Pacific region. To put this in context, a report conducted by analyst house IDC notes that around 50% of the Asia Pacific workforce will be made up of millennials by 2020, fuelling adoption of ‘high potential innovation accelerators’ such as augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR), artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics.

This trend is fuelling significant investment both from and into Asia, with hundreds of European companies visiting Asian markets under EU funded schemes to forge business partnerships in industries such as healthcare, pharmaceutical and energy. But it’s not just ‘traditional’ industries that are interested, digital natives such as Spotify, Monzo and AirBnB are also looking to the region for growth opportunities.

Forecasts by Oxford Economics put Asia’s share of global trade at nearly 45% by 2025. Rapid growth is fuelling a sharp rise in middle class spending, making Asia a key export destination for European businesses. Furthermore, China’s launch of its One Belt One Road (OBOR) plan to connect Asia to Europe mirrors the historical concept of the Silk Road and will have significant global economic implications.

The original Silk Road was an ancient network of trade routes designed to enable merchant traffic between east and west, and a similar network is being established today to carry digital traffic between the same locations.

But all these opportunities depend on secure, scalable and high bandwidth connectivity to critical applications hosted in data centres and clouds. Are you connected enough to take advantage of these opportunities?

The Colt IQ Network connects you to all the key business hubs in Europe and Asia, enabling you to trade around the world.

Get closer with the Colt IQ Network. Be better connected.