Is your business connectivity futureproof?

The requirements we place on our data connectivity have increased dramatically over the past ten years.

Gone are the days of dial-up connections, broadband ADSL is now the baseline with fibre connections becoming increasingly popular as we need faster and more capable connections. Widespread commercialism of the Internet has meant that as well as sending emails and web browsing, we’re also streaming audio and video, video conferencing and holding multi-region meetings using our connectivity solutions.

The creation of cloud technology has only increased the burden we place on our connections. We can now share our files more easily and collaborate with others on projects, have a central place for our music and photo libraries and generally have a much more connected lifestyle. Cloud technology has also brought with it the ability for us to store our documents in the cloud, as a form of backup. While this has become more enticing as the cost of data and connectivity has become cheaper, it still has one fundamental flaw that is yet to be overcome – sheer speed. A backup solution is designed to deal with a phenomenal amount of data, something which is a problem for the average corporate internet connection. For example, if you were to restore a 5TB session after a device failure or disaster, it would take the average 25Mbps connection around four days to download. For most business’ being without their critical data for more than one day is unacceptable and can prove fatal for the organisation.

Now that the data usage curve has had to be re-forecasted, more high-performance, resilient connectivity solutions have become affordable and popular. For example, fibre connections are becoming adopted at a greater rate and this brings down the cost of even greater connectivity as organisations strive for the higher level to try and future-proof their solutions as best they can. This means that solutions like leased lines, putting voice traffic over existing data lines and making organisations more available and reachable has become easier and more affordable over the past few years.

Organisations have to feature connectivity into their business plans and also their continuity plans as the greater demand for more and faster connectivity has placed greater demand on installation services for lines and connections, an industry that was already groaning with the level of demand. Especially when considering redundancy procedures, organisations need to factor in lead times for line installations, configurations etc. as these can often be longer than expected. For example, PSTN with ADSL/FTC lines take an average of 20 working days to install and Leased Line/NetStart connections have a lead time on average of 45 working days. This is another advantage of services like Disaster Recovery, which in the event of a disaster at your site would allow you to work at another site while waiting for your new line(s) to be installed if they became damaged or destroyed.

With society expecting faster and faster responses while creating more and more data, connectivity solutions will need to be regularly reviewed and organisations will have to make their choice of solutions as future-proof as possible.

So, is your current business connectivity solution futureproof?