Your Case for a new Network

Presenting a case for your IT plans may take some persuasion. In the first in a series of articles on how to argue your case convincingly, we look at how you should sell your proposal for a new network to the rest of the company

Unless your company started in the last two years and you had the foresight to buy the fastest and most expensive network on the market, then it’s doubtful that your current network infrastructure is going to be able to cope with your future needs. Over this time, nearly all of the new IT innovations have had some sort of knock-on effect on networks, and none more than voice over IP (VoIP).

Not only does VoIP affect the amount of traffic a network has to handle, it also requires the network to be high quality, otherwise it won’t work properly. On top of this, the increasing requirement for wireless connections, virtual private networks, internet and email access, and the huge quantities of data being handled, mean that most networks are beginning to feel the strain.

Unfortunately, getting a new network isn’t just a case of picking the right kit and then getting it installed. It requires meticulous planning, effective implementation and change management across an entire organisation.

According to industry analysts Gartner, UK businesses will waste more than £50billion on the wrong networking technologies and services over the next five years.

Mark Fabbi, who leads analyst Gartner’s research in Enterprise Network Infrastructure, believes companies are putting their money into the wrong technologies. He says that approaching network design in a new way can dramatically change the current cost model, but a lot of companies are missing these opportunities by repeating the mistakes of the past, such as believing the common misconception that bigger and faster equal better.

“Enterprises are continuing to follow old practices and outdated rules of thumb,” he says. “They have to start thinking differently. Today, we really have to understand what applications and business processes run on the network instead of just building a generic network.”

By ignoring applications and business processes, companies are missing out on opportunities to build a network that would give them a competitive edge, he adds.

Gartner found that by following outdated network design principles, 70 percent of companies will be at a competitive business disadvantage because they miss out on initiatives that drive new business processes. The research also found that businesses lack the budget room for these initiatives because they overspend in other areas.

“You have to build the network,” Fabbi points out, “not just a network. You have to understand what’s going to make a difference and build a network around that.”

Arguing your case

“So why do we need a new network?” This will probably be the fi rst question the board, Finance Director or Managing Director will ask you. The short answer is to keep your competitive advantage, but there’s more to it than that.

The major analysts are all predicting that wireless, VoIP and video conferencing are really going to take off in the next few years, so a good start is to search the IT news websites for references to analyst reports on these technologies.

Next you need to pick a few reasons why you need to upgrade. VoIP has been written about extensively and it’s the one area where you’re most likely to get executive buy in. There are sound business reasons for adopting VoIP – the biggest draw is that saves money and enables you to cut down on a network.

By using VoIP the business can save on call costs – the bigger the company and the more distributed it is, the bigger the potential cost savings. Branch to branch telecoms costs can be reduced to zero and international and national costs can be cut significantly too.

By adopting VoIP you can shed 90 percent of your old analog phone network. However, to install VoIP effectively you need a network that will prioritise voice traffic over data, ideally a network with quality of service (QoS) settings. Four other reasons to get a better network are:

1

Applications that were, until very recently, considered to be high-end or esoteric are beginning to find increased use in businesses, to the point that they will soon become ‘must haves’. The most important of these are applications that use multimedia including video and/or audio.

2

Video conferencing is gaining support. ‘Virtual meetings’ enable more team members to get together to discuss business matters while simultaneously minimising time away from the office, improving upon efficiency. The connection option that makes this possible and affordable across campuses and metro areas is often a point-to-point broadband wireless link.

3

Internet traffic continues to increase exponentially and effective systems need to be in place to meet this demand. Emerging IT packages, such as network storage and networked backups, require large data pipes. Networked storage involves network attached storage (NAS) as well as storage over IP (SoIP) where storage resides on the network. Network backups provide cost savings by allowing one large tape device located in one building to back up the servers found in multiple buildings.

4

Emerging IT practices, such as storage virtualisation, are moving to thin-client architectures, which are being used by large businesses and will filter down to smaller firms. Distributed applications that run on thin-client also need fast, reliable networks but can drastically cut hardware costs.