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Broadband - do I really need it?
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Much has been written about the importance of Broadband to the future
of eBusiness in the UK . Scarcely a day passes without some reference to Broadband in the newspapers, specialist media or in political circles. So significant is the topic that the Government's eEnvoy has set up an industry-wide body to review developments and make policy choices. The Government is in fact committed to seeing that the UK does
not fall behind other major economies
in the roll out of Broadband infrastructure as well as to ensuring that all regions, not just major urban areas, have adequate access to the technology.
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Hype or fact? Here come the statistics.
Hard evidence for the economic impact of broadband is now starting to emerge. For example, in 2001 a survey of small businesses estimated that, 'by 2005, broadband will be making £3.5 billion productivity savings and £1.2 billion cost savings a year for the UK Small and Medium Sized Enterprise (SME) sector.' It also predicted that about 40% of all SMEs in Britain (some 1.4 million businesses) will be connected to broadband by this time.
A more recent survey for British Chambers of Commerce showed that only 16% of SMEs could not identify any benefits from broadband adoption whereas 46.4 % thought that they had benefited from improved productivity, 45.3% from reduced costs and 13.4% from increased sales.
In summary, predictions on the impact
for UK business are that broadband;
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reduces costs |
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increases employee satisfaction |
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is becoming a business tool, not just
an access device |
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makes small businesses more productive |
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provides greater lifestyle choices for people e.g. home-working |
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will be an important driver for usage
of Internet information and services
at work |
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drives innovation |
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So is broadband for you?
Servo's top 6 considerations for Broadband usage within business
Well there has been a lot of hype around the whole broadband piece, aided by the high levels of media and advertising. So as an IT manger, has this helped you with your role; or just generated unreasonable demands from finance on why your network is costing so much when broadband can do it all for £30 a month!
In Servo's findings, a dose of realism is sometimes needed about the true deliverables of broadband. Certainly if your business relies on internet access or connectivity between sites, then we would advise caution in utilising broadband. With limited and un-guaranteed SLA 's, there are generally alternate services that are better suited for delivering business crucial applications or services. However, many of our corporate customers have also achieved significant success in deploying broadband as a supplementary service to their main connectivity solutions; either for internet access - providing additional bandwidth for browsing; home and flexible working solutions for staff; mobile working - through services such as BT Openzone; and for cost-effective VPN solutions for branch sites.
In conclusion then, when assessing whether broadband can live up to its expectations and deliver true business benefits within your organisation - our experience has found that some of the following points are worth considering;
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Internet access - broadband offers businesses the cheapest bandwidth around, however, what would be the impact on your organisation of the service being down - could you live with an un-guaranteed fix time for a service outage? If so then broadband could be for you. Alternatively, could you benefit from a second pipe into your business to be used for browsing or a back up to your main link? |
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Site connectivity - again dependant on the SLA and upload speeds you require for connecting your sites, broadband provides a very cost-effective method of establishing a Virtual Private Network (VPN) between your locations. This has proved particularly successful in the retail environment to replace existing dial up solutions, and also as a basis for homeworker networks. |
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Private Broadband solutions - There are also ways of deploying broadband networks without actually using the public internet to alleviate any security concerns or additional hardware costs. This type of solution was recently used to meet the requirements of NCH, one of the UK 's largest charities. Servo's proposition had four key elements: a secure IP Virtual Private Network (VPN) that delivers secure ADSL broadband connections to the 500 project sites; email, using Microsoft Exchange, for over 5,000 users; a Storage Area Network for documents and emails; and a secure BT Internet connection.
"Security was the key feature in our specification, and in Servo's solution" says Javaid Khan, Director of Business Support Services for NCH. "Servo gave us fixed costs for access for all of our sites, enabling us to budget more easily. Another important aspect is speed of access to our intranet, which carries our policies, procedures and lots of information. The new broadband arrangements will be much quicker, and will significantly improve our communications." Click here for the full NCH case study |
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Home workers - do you have people who regularly dial in from home or send in expense claims for phone bills? With teleworker ADSL solutions starting from as little as £13.00 a month, broadband provides the perfect medium for establishing a viable home working or flexible working package for your employees and support staff. Servo has been helping Xansa to set up it's flexible working services providing specific 'bundles' of services incorporating the router, ADSL line, and helpdesk support to every new user. Angela Hardy of Xansa commented for a previous edition of this newsletter "I can perform exactly the same tasks I performed in the office, the service is so fast and efficient. And, with school age children, it's fantastic for my home life." Click here to read the full Xansa case study |
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Mobile working - with so many locations now providing high bandwidth internet access for users on the move, could broadband play a part in your company's mobile access strategy? |
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Convergence - a subject worthy of an article all on its own. The high availability of cost-effective and high bandwidth networks gives business an ideal opportunity to assess the way they deliver voice and other multi-media services to their offices and staff. |
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BT breaks down barrier to bring a million more customers within reach of broadband
From September 2004, the reach limit for the 512kb/sec ADSL services will be removed. BT is also increasing the range for 1Mb/sec premium services from 4km to approximately 6km - making 1Mb/sec ADSL available to 96 per cent of homes and businesses connected to a broadband exchange. |
What is BT Business Broadband Advanced (SDSL)?
Launched earlier this year, SDSL delivers all the benefits of Broadband but in both directions at the same speed. BT Business Broadband Advanced connects you to the Internet at the same rate for uploads and downloads - that's up to 8 times faster than traditional ADSL Broadband for uploading.
Designed with the needs of business in mind, Symmetric Digital Subscriber Line (SDSL) technology gives you a dedicated high-speed Internet connection that is fast, efficient and economical.
BT Business Broadband Advanced is ideal, if you want to:
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Connect your business sites together, cost-effectively at high speed. |
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Give your teleworkers a fast and efficient connection to your servers. |
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Host your own web sites or mail servers. |
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Send and receive data at the same speed. |
BT Business Broadband Advanced supports IPSec VPNs. By adding this functionality you can securely connect colleagues in multiple sites more quickly and cost-effectively. It also gives you the ability to reliably host and maintain your own email and web servers in-house.
The next steps
If you'd like to learn more about broadband and the implications it could have for your company, please contact your Servo Account manager, or email me directly:
richard.heaviside@servo.co.uk
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