What's the Big Deal with Business Broadband?

The issues concerning managers of businesses are plentiful. How do you get and keep your customers? How do you motivate and develop your staff? How do you improve your profit margins and reduce your costs? The list is endless. o­n top of all that there is endless administration, and the annoyance of widget cold calls!The job of a manager is frankly pretty relentless, but for those of us who manage a business we also know it can be pretty satisfying too; come o­n its not all that bad!Now don’t loose me here; perhaps o­nce in a blue moon, those widget sales people can actually have something interesting to offer your company. A good manager efficiently weeds out what could be helpful to your business versus what is more likely to be a waste of your time and energy.Those widget sales people have probably called you about broadband, not just o­nce, but many times. You may or may not be using broadband in your business today – you may be thinking, isn’t broadband just about getting the news at lunchtime, sending/receiving email, and checking your bank balance? The point I’m trying to make here is that o­ne of the widget issues currently worth thinking about today is: What does the Broadband age means to me? Lowering costs, becoming more efficient, growing market share are clearly what good managers should be looking to do in their role, and you can bet your bottom pound that your competitors are using broadband to do just this. Ignore the broadband age at your peril! For those of us who want to be faster to market and for those of us who have got an eagle eye o­n our costs, Broadband is an enabler.Broadband first really started to make inroads into the business market in 2000 with the extensive rollout of technology in BT local exchanges. It was not a new technology to understand for companies that had networks, it was actually a replacement technology for their dial up, ISDN and leased line business connections. Businesses who operated networks initially saw broadband as a consumer technology, perhaps not appropriate to their business. Many managers concluded that although broadband was an exciting technology it certainly wasn’t a priority technology to apply in their business.But time has marched o­n and Broadband technology has taken a real grip of not just the consumer market, but also the business market. It’s now time to really look at these benefits or lose a great opportunity.Networks connect businesses. Networks connect business sites to each other and pass data. For a manager that’s all we really need to understand. Networks are built of wires and these wires cost money. Dial-up, ISDN, Leased Lines are all different types of wire and broadband is just another blend. Business networks connect business at a cost. A network that was procured at a good price a few years ago, could be passing data faster at a reduced cost today. And that’s where we, as managers, need to be more vigilant and attentive. If your business still operates dial-up, ISDN or leased lines and you haven’t considered a broadband replacement, then cost saving efficiency opportunities exist in your business today.http://www.managedcomms.co.ukYou may have heard the term Virtual Private Network or VPN, or IPVPN, or IPSec VPN… the list is endless! VPN means a network that is constructed by using public wires to connect nodes- the public wires: Broadband, the nodes: your office sites. VPNs are pretty useful because they enable you to connect your business, often using the Internet, to share data between employees. Essentially you take a small slice of a very large network to connect your offices safely and securely. Broadband is being used extensively in businesses today to create broadband virtual private networks. Broadband is typically connected from a national network to your business site. Technology is used to securely connect the broadband enabled sites to create a low cost data network. The overall cost of these broadband networks is vastly less than dial-up, ISDN and leased lines. Now not all Broadband is the same. Business grade broadband should be reliable and high speed so that information, such as spreadsheets, email, customer data, can exchanged rapidly and reliably between employees. VPN’s do this, they do this well when the quality of the Broadband is high and the VPN network architecture is high-performance.So far so good? Reliable quality of connection between sites at good speed, for less cost... sounds too good to be true! And to an extent it is.There’s another aspect here that as managers we all need to be more thoughtful of and that’s security. I imagine that we are all fairly likely to understand physical security, we use it every day, from yale locks, to card access to CCTV. But do we really understand the security of information that is moving between our offices and the implications if a data theif got hold of it? Identity theft is a growing issue in society today and it isn’t limited to consumers. Businesses face threats to their data thousands of times per day. Managers are aware of the threat that a paper customer list can have in the wrong hands. Companies should apply the same thoughts to any electronic data, especially if it is passing between businesses. Fully managed VPN service providers help keep your data secure buy maintaining a small piece of technology at each site that your network connects to. The key function of this device is to encrypts all the data moving around your network. This means that the information flow between your offices remains secure. The very best managed VPN providers also route your traffic off the public internet absolutely minimizing the threat of network threats and bottlenecks. So faster, safer and less cost… any manager in a business today should be considering the broadband age. Next time the widget person calls maybe just take 5 minutes out. Perhaps broadband or a VPN would make your business operate more effectively at a reduced overhead. It’s an easy option to ignore the Broadband technologies that are available to us as the market seems to progress so fast. But ignoring the opportunity is not the best option. Embracing it and trying to get o­n board gives really tangible benefits, the next technology I’m putting o­n my broadband VPN is voice traffic – but that’s a whole new chapter in this networking story. http://www.managedcomms.co.uk http://www.managedcomms.co.uk/managed-services/vpn-solutionhttp://www.managedcomms.co.uk/managed-services/load-balanced-vpnhttp://www.managedcomms.co.uk/managed-services/bonded-dslhttp://www.managedcomms.co.uk/managed-services/qos-dslhttp://www.managedcomms.co.uk/managed-services/bonded-sdslhttp://www.managedcomms.co.uk/managed-services/bonded-sdslhttp://www.managedcomms.co.uk/managed-services/business-voip2http://www.managedcomms.co.uk/managed-services/bonded-vpnhttp://www.managedcomms.co.uk/managed-services/bonded-adslhttp://www.managedcomms.co.uk/managed-services/bonded-adsl-max

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