Have you noticed that the world of business is moving faster but your files seem to move slower? As technology improves our expectations and requirements for speed of data increase.
At home, at work and on the move, we keep finding new ways to use the digital super highway and demand a better service from our internet service providers (ISPs). For our mobile and home our internet connection options are fairly straight-forward but for our business the solutions are not always so obvious. This is in part caused by the cost.
The reality of cost and availability is still a big issue in Australia even as the NBN rolls out. So it is important that we find the bottlenecks in business networks, put the right controls in place and consider practicalities such as cheap fast connections for web browsing and higher quality connections for voice and line of business applications.
Your options
The solutions you will need over the next few years will depend on your location in terms of which of the following connections are available:
- Ethernet over copper
- Satellite technologies
- Wireless networks
- ADSL/DSL
- Bonded ADSL/DSL
- Fibre
- NBN fibre to the node
- NBN fibre to your office
Key considerations
Other than location, the decision will depend greatly on how much of your technology is in the office versus how much is in the cloud. It will also depend on where your staff are, either in the head office, in a branch office accessing data and systems in the head office or on the road. It is this combination of storage points and staff mobility that makes for complex analysis to minimise cost so important.
The most common connections today are ADSL and DSL. The “A” means Asynchronous which tells us it is faster in one direction than the other, typically fast for downloads and slow for uploads. DSL implies it is the same speed in both directions. Bonded services simply take multiple single services and bundle them together to give greater speed both up and down. As demands increase fibre and NBN solutions will become more accessible in terms of price and availability.
It is also important to consider your points of failure from your routers to your data connections. Installing multiple points of failure (for redundancy) can help avoid expensive down-time that can take your business offline and have a big impact on your staff who are dependent on access to systems. You should factor in the cost of a few hours of non-productive time to help establish the right budget for your broadband connections.
Also there is the consideration of security. It is possible your data should be on a private network or encrypted before it leaves your control.
If you are less than confident in the efficiency of your network or internet connections then please contact us for advice. Getting the right connection put in place could save you thousands of dollars in direct costs and improve your staff productivity.