Continuity Central: Lack of network scrutiny causes business continuity headaches

Companies searching for Midwest data center facilities or Midwest disaster recovery services may find this article valuable:

When we think of business continuity, security attacks, power failures and terrorists instantly spring to mind. While we are all aware of the importance of our organization’s IT and communications network to the day to day work of employees, most of us don’t often think of network maintenance, configuration and upgrades as a vital part of business continuity.

For the vast majority of companies, the network is now the engine of their business. Consequently network downtime results in an inability to operate and therefore an enormous loss of productivity and revenue.

This was underlined by the results of the recently published annual Network Barometer Report from Dimension Data. The study, which assessed 235 networks in companies around the world, highlighted issues and vulnerabilities of networks and shows that some IT managers are now taking the necessary steps to secure and solidify their network assets.

The report revealed several prominent factors at the heart of networking issues facing managers today:

* Configuration issues and violations are the main cause of network disruption and resultant business continuity issues. Each network configuration error represents a chance of downtime and most networks have hundreds of configured devices on them. The report shows that on some networks in Europe, a device holds up to 88 networking configuration issues. This is due to the fact that demands of business activity outweigh those of IT service, meaning networks are not set up correctly. More emphasis should be placed on correctly configuring a network before it is made live to help rectify potential downtime issues.

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Alex Carroll

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Alex, co-owner, is responsible for all real estate, construction and mission critical facilities: hardened buildings, power systems, cooling systems, fire suppression, and environmentals. Alex also manages relationships with the telecommunications providers and has an extensive background in IT infrastructure support, database administration and software design and development. Alex architected Lifeline’s proprietary GRCA system and is hands-on every day in the data center.