Every day, businesses become increasingly dependent on the internet. Critical applications are moving into the cloud at an alarming rate. As a result, if a business’s network goes down, they cannot operate and lose valuable time and money. According to a recent survey, 98% of organizations reported that a single hour of downtime costs over $100,000. However, a network outage can go beyond an obvious and immediate monetary loss. Communicating with customers, suppliers and partners – whether through email, phone or another method – often relies on a rock-solid internet connection. Issues with the network can frustrate customers and jeopardize a business’s reputation. As customers consider the design of their networks, they can take a few important steps that contribute to a solid business continuity plan.
Deploying diverse network infrastructure with multiple paths at every location decreases the risk of a network outage. Designing a network with route, point-of-presence (POP) and/or carrier diversity in mind provides failover options when one system goes down:
Route Diversity
Ensures that two connections travel over different physical routes into a location
POP Diversity
Redundant connections originate from different points of presence, even though they terminate at the same location
Carrier Diversity
Uses different underlying carriers to deliver redundant services to the same location
While diversity concepts are simple enough to imagine, making them a reality is time-consuming and complicated. Carriers are seldom interested in working with each other or divulging specifics about fiber routes to accomplish a customer’s diversity goals, so customers struggle to coordinate this effort. Working with a service provider like Nitel takes that burden off of your customer. Our experts have access to information and people as well as the know-how to coordinate with carriers and design a diverse network that works best for your customer.
SD-WAN and Business Continuity
With the emergence of SD-WAN, customers have another great business continuity option available to them. Your customer can use redundant connections at any of their locations, as network traffic is routed to the best link for every packet, in real time. The result is a more resilient network where users experience none of the ill effects of a down or degraded network connection.
No matter what the cause, disruptions in an organization’s business can be costly. Having a business continuity strategy in place is necessary to mitigate outages, allowing key functions of a business to continue when things go wrong. With Nitel as your network partner, your customer has access to over 1,100 last-mile vendors to maximize network performance uptime, with the convenience of a single provider.
Exploring failover options with your customer can contribute to a successful business continuity plan. The next time you meet with a customer who’s looking to design a hybrid network, reach out to your Nitel channel manager. Let our experts design a diverse solution that lets your customer rest easy.
Post by Todd Draper, Solutions Engineer, Nitel. Want to learn more? Check out our blog post: 6 Methods for Achieving a Diverse Network.