Corporate IT networks poorly protected against loss of connectivity says new survey

56 per cent have no secondary connection and 80 per cent fear reduced productivity

UK enterprises are risking costly downtime by not having secondary connectivity systems in place to protect their wide area networks and internet connections according to new research.

51 per cent of the survey, completed by 110 IT executives, admitted 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 per cent of those outages could have been avoided by having a secondary connection to protect against issues affecting primary network links.

Graham McLean, MD of CI-Net, the fully managed wide area networks, hosting and Internet services provider that conducted the survey, said:

“56 per cent 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 per cent of the sample, is what most organisations fear from a network connectivity failure. Other concerns included reduced customer service (56 per cent), damaged reputation (25 per cent) and lost sales (16 per cent).

Remote working is a growing issue with 85 per cent of the sample operating networks to support remote workers and 22 per cent maintaining over 100 people working remotely. 72 per cent 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.”

According to McLean, whose company is a specialist in implementing and managing wide area networks and virtual private networks, 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.”
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About the research
CI-Net’ research was based on an online survey of 110 IT executives, focusing on private and public sector organisations that have to connect multiple sites or support remote workers.

About CI-Net
Over 2,000 UK organisations rely on CI-Net’s secure, resilient, managed wide area networks (WANs). These organisations choose CI-Net to manage their WAN because of the flexibility and comprehensive services we offer, the unrivalled quality and resilience of our network and our unparalleled reputation for innovation and customer support. Working closely with customers to understand specific requirements, CI-Net builds and supports solutions crafted from an extensive portfolio of connectivity solutions, security and optimisation products plus web and professional services to support a huge variety of on-line and e-business activities. CI-Net enables businesses of all sizes to communicate better with their customers, suppliers, partners, home workers, branch offices, temporary sites and mobile workers – no matter what the circumstances.
CI-Net was formally called Community Internet plc.

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This release was published on openPR.