Uncategorized

This week’s infographics takes an in-depth look at fibre optic cabling and how different types can affect network performance. The image itself is courtesy of US company Siemon, following benchmarking tests on different types of fibre cabling.

The testing and accompanying study included looking at generic fibre jumpers, which can be obtained through retail channels, usually online through approved resellers and big brand names from around the globe. This was intended to help infrastructure specialists help understand the variables that could be at work when it comes to the solutions that they choose.

Many businesses today use LAN (Local Area Network) technology to enable employees to share a common data source. It also provides a common point via which the devices that employees use, can communicate with one another. There is however an ongoing debate as whether businesses should deliver their LANs via a wired, or an unwired connection.

But with more and more companies now opting to deploy wireless rather than wired technology, are they perhaps not fully informed, or is it that they see are making informed decisions and are opting to avail themselves of the many advantages that working wirelessly facilitates?

As we rely more and more on technology to help us to increase business agility and profitability, downtime on the network can be costly to any business. For the data centre, it can be fatal if they have a lot of customers relying on the various services that they may offer.

As the use of cloud computing increases and more businesses turn to the technology in order to host their entire IT infrastructure, any downtime a data centre may suffer will have a ripple effect on the businesses that they serve.

All businesses, regardless of size, should have some sort of Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) in place. Even a sole trader will be in trouble if his/her computer goes down, denying all access to programs, outstanding order details, billing and shipping addresses.

Having a DRP in place is only Half the Battle

Having a good DRP in place is only half the battle. Knowing how to implement that plan, and making sure that the plan works as it is meant to, are both equally important factors too – in fact more than that – they are essential. Finding out that the plan cannot be deployed for any reason, or that it has failed to take some important aspect into consideration, may well prove to be as bad as not having a plan in situ in the first place.

Back in 2007, Gartner technology researchers found that ICT accounted for 2% of all global CO2 emissions. They also pointed out at this time that this was as much as that produced by the aviation industry.

The USA’s Initiative

The realisation that industries such as IT have a significant part to play in the CO2 emissions war, has given rise to a number of international initiatives focused on the construction of new environmentally friendly buildings. For example in North America, the USGBC (United States Green Building Council) have just had the LEED v4 rating system officially approved, and relevant trades within the industry have been advised to take note.

The IT function within any business can be considered as a tool designed to leverage the attaining of that business’s goals, the biggest of which is to make money – to turn over a profit. What no company can afford to do is to jeopardise that goal, by allowing the best tool it has for achieving it, to under-perform.

The Product Guarantee

Most of the important tools that are used in operating a business are protected with a guarantee. These guarantees are usually straightforward. If the product fails within a given time scale, (usually those time scales can be lengthened to meet circumstances), it will be repaired or replaced free of charge. If the tool in question is a Van or a Lathe, that arrangement works well, always providing the repair or exchange is done in a timely manner. But with IT it’s quite different.

When CharlesDarwin published his theory of evolution, computers only existed in the
realms of science fiction (if at all). As for the web, that would have been
considered the stuff of unimagined dreams. Darwin’s theory, posited in “The
Origin of the Species”, was of coursed aimed at the natural world.

However, it can also be applied to the world of computing
and the Internet in particular. The web as we know understand it first came
being in 1974 when Telenet
become the world’s first ISP. Telenet brought something that had previously
only been used by the US military – something referred to as ARPANET, into
the public domain.

Unified communications is essentially the strategy of treating allcommunications as data and processing them through the same network. Thus
landlines are replaced by VoIP communications, fax machines by electronic fax
gateways and answering services with a number which follows employees.

This typically generates a reduction in support costs, not only because
it means that only one set of infrastructure has to supported, but also because
it means that internal phone calls can be taken out of the public telephone
network and made for free over the corporate network. While costs benefits
always go down well, unified communications have numerous benefits which would
make the strategy valuable even if it carried a cost.