Corporate IT networks poorly protected against connectivity loss
56% have no secondary connection and 80% fear reduced productivity
CI-Net's survey indicates UK enterprises are risking costly downtime by not having secondary connectivity systems in place to protect their wide area networks and internet connections. 51% of the survey, completed by 110 IT executives, said that their organisations had experienced at least one network outage in the last 12 months. The research, which is focused on organisations that have to connect multiple locations and/or support remote workers, indicates that at least 57% of those outages could have been avoided by having a secondary connection to protect against issues affecting primary network links.
Graham McLean, CI-Net MD, said: “56% of those we polled said they didn’t have any secondary systems to maintain connectivity if there was a problem. This is all the more surprising because most organisations are aware that an outage that disrupts connectivity between offices or disables network access for remote workers could seriously hamper their operations. In the same survey, business continuity was actually the most frequently quoted priority that IT executives highlighted for their networks over the next twelve months. It rated higher than cost cutting as a priority – which indicates how important staying connected is for many organisations.”
Reduced employee productivity, mentioned by 80% of the sample, is what most organisations fear from a network connectivity failure. Other concerns included reduced customer service (56%), damaged reputation (25%) and lost sales (16%). Remote working is a growing issue with 85% of the sample operating networks to support remote workers and 22% maintaining over 100 people working remotely. 72% said it would b a major issue if these workers were unable to access central systems. “It is possible to lose connectivity in a number of ways – including physical faults, accidents, natural disasters or even terror tactics,” explained McLean. “Some of these incidents such as cables being damaged by road works, power failures and flooding of underground conduits are more common than many people think. And without built-in resilience incorporated into the way organisations access the Internet or support inter-site connectivity, their whole infrastructure, dependent applications and business operations are at risk. To bring in resilience you must ensure you have secondary links that can come into play should primary connections fail.”
There are network appliances available to automate the failover process so that connectivity is seamlessly transferred to alternative links if primary connections fail. “Almost any type of link can be supported and made more resilient in this way, from ADSL business broadband, to dedicated high bandwidth, private leased lines. It is most effective if the different links come from diverse service providers so if one provider has a problem on its infrastructure, the other(s) will hopefully not be affected by the same issues. “For truly diverse routing, some organisations are now going a stage further by combining cabled based connections with wireless connections. Having two distinct connections – wired and wireless, which automatically failover to each other - provides added protection.”
