Enhancing WAN Performance … Why? How?
Do these statements sound familiar for carrier managed networks?
“Our response times are terrible.”
“We can’t get to the right person quickly enough.”
“We have no control.”
“Making a change is too hard.”
“We have limited visibility into our network.”
“Our projects are behind schedule due to network outages.”
“We constantly have to do work-a-rounds to get things done.”
IMC understands the importance of enhancing WAN performance in your enterprise. Below, we explain why it is important, what situations are preventing organisations from getting business value from their networks, and how IMC helps organisations to optimise network performance and extract more value from their WAN.
WHY is enhancing WAN performance important?
Networks, and the connectivity they provide, give organisations and their people the opportunity to collaborate and rapidly share information, no matter where they are. Networks should be able to deliver new services, faster, while containing recurring carriage costs.
A network performing to its optimum should:
- Reduce or contain recurring carriage costs
- Improve user productivity
- Enable more efficient customer service
- Make your business faster than the competition
- Address inherent latency (slowness) problems
WHAT contributes to enhanced WAN performance?
In order to enhance WAN performance in your enterprise, you need to address a number of contributing factors:
Technology
- WAN optimisers (e.g. Riverbed, Cisco, Citrix, Blue Coat, Expand, Juniper), routers and switches (Cisco, Juniper, Foundry, HP), “thin client “(Citrix) – address latency and compression
Skills/People
- You need expert people to unlock the value of your investment in technology; the integration of technologies is not possible without people
- Knowledge is power, and experts will constantly reshape your technology to deliver improved performance
Design and Policy
- Smart design delivers performance based on business requirements. What’s critical? What’s not?
- Your design and policy must address redundancy and uptime
Configuration
- For example, QOS (BU’s compete for prioritisation) extracts value from your investment and improves performance
Visibility
- Statistics, e.g. Netflow, that illuminate: utilisation, errors, up-down status and device thresholds lead to faster problem resolution and mitigation of risk, so you can make informed decisions quickly, and undertake capacity planning
Control
- Ensures agility and flexibility, speed to move
- Control is essential to innovate and optimise – without it you work to others’ timescales and you will be held back
Bandwidth
- Obvious but expensive – doesn’t really help latency
Management Processes
- Ensure service delivery consistency, speed of response, service quality, accountability, and manage resource redundancy and efficiency
Innovation
- Can be difficult without control
- New things constantly coming out, so you must be able to embrace change and gain the competitive advantage
Reliability
- Uptime absolutely CRITICAL
- Dependant on design
Security
- Must be part of every aspect
- Security breaches can have widespread implications and are very costly
HOW does the IMC NetActive service and toolset contribute to enhanced WAN performance?
IMC combines a comprehensive mix of services and software tools, specifically designed and managed to operate mission critical networks to their optimal performance levels, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
You are supported by a team of networking experts who are always available on your first call, to: reduce outage times, improve network performance and deliver sound knowledgeable advice.
If your organisation wants to leverage its WAN to gain a competitive advantage, you need to have four key elements in place:
CONTROL of your network
FLEXIBILITY to deliver new services and adjust to change
PERFORMANCE to improve speed to market
VISIBILITY to make informed decisions
IMC is an expert in:
- Network monitoring and troubleshooting services
- Capturing and then delivering valuable network information to you, in order to: reduce time for problem resolution, help you make more informed decisions and improve capacity planning
- Establishing suitable service management processes for network monitoring, change management, issue resolution and new service implementation
- Offering you clarity around carrier related issues
- Flexible engagements where IMC is considered an extension of your team; a sound starting point to then fine tune our services to your needs