With the rise of mobile e-commerce and the ability of digital marketing to target people where they are open to engagement and influence buying decisions in real-time, the digital marketing industry is growing at an unprecedented rate. Global digital spend is expected to reach $336 billion this year, accounting for over half of all ad spend for the first time. And, the Marketing Technology (MarTech) solutions to support digital marketing have grown 4,500% in the past eight years with 7,040 individual solutions existing as of 2019.

Data from these MarTech solutions and digital marketing campaigns drive the success of future projects. Due to the global nature of digital marketing, there is a ton of data coming in constantly from all over the world. The combination of the growth in the industry along with the huge amount of data being produced has sparked a need for MarTech companies to have a reliable, scalable infrastructure to manage and analyze the data being delivered.

Global Infrastructure Challenges in the MarTech Industry

For MarTech companies to get a real sense of the scale of data they are working with, they need to think only about the amount of data they have to handle and store to analyze one customer’s journey. Each customer follows a unique path through multiple touchpoints, and a variety of solutions may be used to capture data related to each touchpoint along that journey. When you multiply that one customer by several million customers, you quickly get a sense of the amount of data involved, and how challenging it can be to manage ongoing analysis while ensuring zero downtime or data corruption.

Two additional challenges we’ve seen for MarTech companies are supporting Real-Time Bidding (RTB), and prioritizing basic data protection services and regulations. RTB refers to the buying and selling of online ad impressions through real-time auctions that occur in seconds. The data to support RTB needs to be collected, delivered and analyzed instantly in order to be able to extract value, and, to make that happen, a stable, flexible infrastructure with the lowest network latency possible is required.

Basic services such as DDoS mitigation, fraud prevention, disaster recovery, and backup are essential to protect data but can be overlooked. In the event of a cyberattack, companies could face considerable recovery costs if they do not have these services in place. In addition, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in the U.S. and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe now require companies to have stricter data privacy policies in place, and companies must stay on top of these evolving regulations to remain compliant or risk paying heavy fines.

Considerations for MarTech Companies

Keeping an eye toward the future is imperative to inform the right hosting option for a business. First, find out whether the current solution fits the business locally and globally based on where the company wants to be in six, 12 or 24 months. And, if the current infrastructure does not support growth in a feasible way, it is time to reevaluate.

A reliable infrastructure for a MarTech company needs to be flexible enough to handle peaks but also have enough power to quickly process, analyze and store data. Companies also need to check their network for flexibility on bandwidth consumption latency. Nothing can impact a business more than low capacity on a network.

Turning to Hybrid Solutions

A Hybrid Cloud approach combines standard services such as Private Cloud, dedicated servers, and security services all in one to deliver requirements for flexibility on storage, high-level performance, security and the ability to globally scale the business as it grows. As an extra bonus, Hybrid Cloud solutions also reduce monthly costs when compared to the Public Cloud or a full-dedicated server environment.

There is an anticipation among global infrastructure providers that they will see the rise of managed global hybrid solutions in 2020. And, if you look at the MarTech space, in particular, venture capitalists have been investing heavily in various companies to make them grow globally. The rise of managed global hybrids is the only way in 2020 to fill this market need: the need to have secure, reliable, global access to global data.

Global Managed Hybrid Solutions are the Key to Solving MarTech Challenges

As the amount of data from digital marketing campaigns continues to increase, hybrid solutions will be key for businesses: Their ability to deliver on performance, flexibility, and scale will be invaluable to businesses to help not only maintain their current data but to grow with the company. Hybrid solutions are going to be the tool digital agencies rely on because they provide the reliable, scalable infrastructure to manage and analyze the data being delivered, making them the tool for digital agencies’ success.

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