How do I prepare for the increasing business demands on bandwidth and speed?

Every organisation inevitably faces the need to upgrade its connectivity infrastructure. The response of your server-based applications may be slowing down at times of peak network traffic or the business may want to install new network intensive applications.

Upgrading switches and traffic management software may have already been tried, but at this point your IT department may be forced to confront the bandwidth barrier.

Recognising that this barrier has been reached is an essential first step in solving network performance problems. The next step - getting everyone to agree on the best solution - is usually much harder. Upgrading the connectivity infrastructure can be quite disruptive, and the prospect of persuading your top management to invest in the most cost-effective long-term solution can be challenging.

Unlike visible hardware such as PCs, servers and even switches, cabling is in the background and not an obvious choice for investment. As a result, financial managers may be slow to see the need to spend money on cabling upgrades. And since there's much more to a connectivity upgrade than a quick box swap, they may not fully understand what is involved.

Cost-justifying your investment

Replacing network infrastructure is complex, labour-intensive work that demands skilled project management. Added to this, it should be cost-justified over a 10- to 20-year lifespan, rather than a two-to-five-year IT replacement cycle used by most financial managers.

Justifying extra investment in a solution that will serve the business well for ten years or more takes strong financial arguments. But, if these aren't made, the business could end up with a solution that will only keep network congestion at bay for just a few years.

Before giving other managers numbers to justify paying for high quality connectivity, it's useful to help them appreciate the vital role connectivity plays in running a business.

The power of better communication infrastructure lies in its ability to improve the whole business. Many small gains in productivity and customer service can often be all it takes to win contracts and keep business that would otherwise go to competitors.

Faster, more reliable information flow is intended to make an organisation fitter and sharper by helping users to react a bit quicker, move a bit faster and co-ordinate better with the other team members.

Better connectivity can give your organisation a competitive edge. However, the argument must still be backed by figures that quantify return on investment (ROI).

New cabling has a much longer life than many other IT investments

This means that the acceptable payback time is also longer. If, for instance, the new installation has a projected total lifespan of just 15 years, a payback time of five years will still leave 10 years in which the cabling investment contributes to higher profits.

The investment side of ROI is relatively easy to specify. Competing suppliers will give a cost figure for the entire upgrade project, from removing old cabling to testing and maintaining the new infrastructure. The only grey area on the cost side is lost productivity during the upgrade work, but with careful planning, this loss can be minimised. However, any expenses for relocating people, temporary connections and overtime to maintain output should be added to the investment cost.

Returns on cabling investment are much harder to calculate than the cost and are divided into two parts. These are cost savings (compared with the old system) and increased profits that can be attributed to better business performance.

The 3 cost areas that new cabling will reduce....

New cabling can cut operational, maintenance and downtime costs. Operational costs, such as moves, adds and changes as well as maintenance, are things your IT department can estimate as a proportion of its annual staff and services budgets. If your company keeps records of network downtime, then calculating total operational costs is just a matter of putting a price on every hour that network connectivity is lost or degraded.

If the new cabling solution incorporates real-time infrastructure management, there should be less labour cost for finding and fixing faults. The subsequent operational cost savings could be even greater due to increased efficiency and the streamlining of the whole process of moves, adds and changes.

In addition to justifying replacement of old infrastructure, a cost/benefit analysis is also vital to help make the right choice between alternative upgrade solutions. High performance, high quality solutions can represent a slightly larger initial investment.

But analysis shows that their superior performance can give better network throughput and thus do more to benefit your business.

Do you need to incorporate 10 Gig transmission right away?

Even more important, Category 6A/Class EA compliant solutions can support 10 Gb/s transmission. So if and when your organisation needs to move to 10G networking, there will probably be no need to rip out and replace your entire cabling infrastructure for some time to come.

If high productivity applications that depend on 10G communication are needed sooner rather than later, early replacement of old infrastructure with low performance cabling can end up being more expensive from several different standpoints. First, it may not survive long enough to pay for itself, and second, low cost performance will probably never deliver the same benefits as higher-grade solutions that are able to serve the company's total networking requirements for 15-20 years.

Options when cost-justifying higher-grade cabling

It's worth asking other managers what they could do with higher network performance.

They may see ways to make major savings in such areas as training and travel replacement, for example. Bringing training courses and international meetings directly to participants' desktops can pay the price premium for better cable within a matter of months rather than years.

Costs of out-of-office meetings, conferences and training, in terms of travel, accommodation and time, are among the biggest avoidable expenses in the business world. Better communications infrastructure can tackle this multi-billion cost to business head-on, often giving dramatic savings.

Increased revenue, the other big ROI factor, can only be estimated by the managers concerned. The IT department can help them do this by providing figures for improvement in system response time. These figures can be based on tests by industry bodies and manufacturers or even a department's own trials.

Sales managers can be asked, for instance, how much extra business they could add if system wait times were cut by 30%. For some sales departments the figure may be hard to estimate - a bit like asking a soccer manager how many more games he'll win with players who are 30% fitter. Nevertheless, it's not unreasonable to ask for some kind of estimate.

In particular, departments handling sales enquiries and making sales calls should be able to calculate how much better their results might be with faster system response.

With estimates for increased sales, it's possible to put together a connectivity upgrade proposal with the kinds of pound, dollar and euro signs that get management's attention.

That bottom line focus improves the chances of getting the initial investment to pay for the long- as well as short-term solution that is best for the business.

Finding a company that is willing to contribute resource and expert advice, early in the planning process, can have a major impact in the success of a project. If you have an upcoming cabling requirement and would like some free, impartial advice please call one of our consultants.

Call us on 0845 833 1163 or email advice@roycecomms.com

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