A ny technology evolves through a hype cycle. Soon after the technology is triggered, it reaches a peak of inflated expectations, only to be followed by a trough of disillusionment. Thereafter, reality sets in with enlightenment and eventually reaches a plateau of productivity. Any technology provider should constantly strive to align with this market phenomenon by introducing new generation product at the appropriate time.

In view of the emergence of a host of new technologies, and the need to store, access, and use data and information effectively, there is one thing that all organizations should consider—their network infrastructure. So what would entail an integrated approach to infrastructure?

One, a switched infrastructure enables a far more intelligent network, offering more dedicated bandwidth to users or user groups unlike a shared infrastructure where each user competes for bandwidth making the network increasingly clogged.

Two, although there is still a lot of hype surrounding IP telephony, there are applications that certainly make good business sense to evaluate, assess, and deploy.

Cost savings as high as 30–50 percent have been reported consolidating WAN networks over a common IP infrastructure. IP also allows the consolidated WAN to add bandwidth in stages, depending on business requirements and changing circumstances.

Coming to cabling, it has rarely been seen as part of the core networking infrastructure, but a quality network is only as good as its cabling.

A core part of any convergence strategy is not simply a high uptime but ensuring that there is a high fault-tolerance and throughput in your network. The key worry for most organizations, especially in an environment where voice and data services have merged, is error-free transmission reliability.

As organizations become agile and dynamic, two critical dimensions impact the communications infrastructure—mobility and flexibility.

Application implementation and development are perhaps where the most exciting facets of converged networking lie. It is here that an IP-enabled network will give organizations distinct competitive advantages.

Having said that, with the advent of new technology, such as IP telephony, enterprises must address what elements of the old technology are critical to keep and which new elements offer better benefits and how to integrate them.

For example, technologies are available today to provide solutions that combine data and voice technologies to facilitate geography-independent multimedia customer interaction. Regardless of transport, whether the Internet or the traditional PSTN, a fully integrated architecture depicted here services all media types.

However this integration needs to also offer a seamless migration path from the legacy infrastructure to the IP-empowered one, as both may need to coexist in many cases.

Integrating the network infrastructure is transforming the enterprise today. Today’s enterprises are witnessing the relevance of a traditional value-chain being morphed into a value network. This is being made possible through the digital communications network infrastructure. The network therefore transforms into the ‘business platform’ of the enterprise itself. Therefore it’s perhaps apt to say that the availability of the network (AoN) is equal to the ability of the enterprise (AoE).

From a local area network standpoint, the network availability quotient is largely dependent on the availability and quality of the Ethernet.

Over the last 20 years or so, Ethernet has evolved along with networking requirements. This progression of standards provides a clear and straightforward migration with the explosion of IP traffic and sophisticated applications driving the demand for greater bandwidth inside and outside the enterprise.

Integrated Network Infrastructure
Not every new technology will benefit every organization in the same way. Thus it is important that you choose and implement the right technologies that will benefit and meet the requirements of your business today and in the future. Generally, CTOs are more concerned with equipping the organization with the latest and fastest technologies. Finance directors are cautious with expenditure and return on investments. Business managers have visions of how and where the business should be heading. To fully appreciate which technologies to adopt, it is important that all three views are taken into account.

Your network infrastructure is key to your day-to-day business operations. It is important to ensure that you develop a comprehensive way to profile benefits to both—the support and management of the network as well as the business area.

Identifying various potential risks, developing solutions and adjusting your benefits and costs accordingly will allow for a more precise business value of your infrastructure.

Finally, the chosen partner should have the resources to act as an extension to your IT department during and after the completion of the project. The chosen partner should also have a good knowledge of what developments in other technologies, such as communications and data, would affect your network infrastructure. They should also be able to design and install networks using best practice approach.

One needs to remember that a good network infrastructure can be easily ruined by poor installation, but a badly designed network cannot be improved by good installation. Accredited partners should be the obvious choice.

Bala K Chandran,  managing director, Krone India