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In this issue: Get more out of your network |
September 2008 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
A letter from the executive officeMake the most of your network evolution
Do you think that gives them a competitive advantage? Absolutely! This example illustrates a reality that companies everywhere are waking up to. The network is not just background infrastructure, but is an asset that can be put to work to open the door for applications like on-demand analytics and unified communications. An efficient, multifaceted network is within reach of all enterprises. Indeed, in the near future the goal for most companies should be rapidly increasing functionality and managing costs where the network is concerned. Realizing these goals will get easier as IP becomes the standard and the inevitable transition to unified communications unfolds. This issue of Impact looks at how enterprises are using the network in new ways to enhance collaboration and drive increased transparency, while realizing significant time savings and much more. This month we have some great resources for you, including:
If you want to start getting more out of your network, check out these resources and contact us for an audit of your environment or an overview of how we can help. As always, we welcome your feedback on the tools and resources we offer you in Impact and on any other aspect of our services. Best regards, Stéphane Boisvert President, Bell Enterprise ... Expert Q&A: Using the network to drive efficiency
Impact: Sylvain, thanks for joining us. In the past, companies saw the network simply as the infrastructure that carries your voice system, database applications and email. How is that changing? Sylvain: Smart enterprises are beginning to think of the network as an asset rather than simply as background infrastructure, a cost to be managed. Once you start thinking of it this way, then you can figure out how to put this asset to work for you, depending on your business needs. Is your business outsourcing? Consolidating? Decentralizing? Do you have people working from home? Do you have offshore manufacturing facilities? There are dozens of IP applications that can save time and increase ‘connectedness’ in every conceivable scenario. And as functionality increases, the network can step up to do more and more. Impact: Can you give us an example? Sylvain: Take a newspaper with satellite offices all over the world. Deadlines are tight and news items come in from dozens of countries each day. Citrix and other remote networking applications enable secure collaboration on the same private network – filing articles, editing them live and so on. And with video conferencing and VPN-encrypted lines, it’s like having everyone right there in the office, eliminating extra steps in production. Impact: What are you seeing beyond the usual core areas such as security and collaboration when it comes to using network-based solutions? Sylvain: One of the most interesting developments is on-demand analytics – making relevant data available to people who need it across the enterprise. At the cutting edge of this, we are seeing the creation of custom dashboards that consolidate information drawn from the WAN infrastructure and tailored to users’ needs. So if you are a manufacturer, your marketing executives can check real-time results in each sales channel. Production executives can monitor the thickness of injection moulds as they’re formed or see the production cost of an item when fluctuating raw materials and power costs are factored in…at a facility on the other side of the world! Information like this can be called up as needed, for example during a meeting, making decision-making much faster. Impact: Collaboration tools have evolved tremendously in recent years. How does the network interact with the host of tools in use today? Sylvain: The network can help to create synergies by tying everything in more tightly. One result of this is increased transparency. For example, instant messenger can be linked to your calendar. When you hover over someone’s name, you can see that they are free for half an hour or that they will be in a meeting for the next forty minutes. Team members then know when to limit their communication to quick requests. Your response enables work to continue uninterrupted. As a result there are fewer meetings and conference calls scheduled, because a few quick questions here and there keep things moving. Impact: We are talking about a lot of IP applications here. Are there complications as you add onto the network and how does that affect bandwidth? Sylvain: It’s not uncommon for enterprises to be running ten or fifteen IP applications at once. When businesses feel a bandwidth squeeze because of increasing applications within their pipeline, a common reaction is to increase bandwidth. Certainly, making best use of available bandwidth is a challenge. Impact: So in your experience, what is the best way to deal with the bandwidth challenge? Sylvain: It starts with a network audit that reveals application use and timing, bandwidth demands and more. Then you can move to application acceleration, where you increase the performance of some centralized applications accessed over a network. This will become less important as application service providers stop designing exclusively for low-latency, high-bandwidth local access, but at the moment it’s an important cost-saving measure. Impact: What about class of service? Sylvain: Yes, class of service is another way – grouping similar types of traffic together and treating each type as a class with its own level of service priority. Impact: Doesn’t that impact the efficiency of certain functions? Sylvain: Not if it is done correctly. If there’s even a millisecond’s lag in voice, for example, you are likely to hear it, while delaying the delivery of an email by a few milliseconds isn’t going to make a difference. Some applications, like Citrix, have predictable, low-bandwidth needs, but must have that bandwidth to work properly. On the opposite end of the spectrum, email fluctuates wildly in volume over the course of a day and can block your pipeline if you let it. So accelerating certain applications and prioritizing them all makes best use of the bandwidth available. Impact: If there was one thing that our readers should know about the future of the network, what would it be? Sylvain: The name of the game going forward is rapidly increasing functionality and decreasing costs. An efficient, multifaceted network is within reach of just about any business. The difference now over five years ago is that IP is becoming the standard, resulting in a proliferation of less costly applications. The challenge still lies in integrating everything into one big enterprise network – making local and remote collaboration that much more transparent and tightly integrated. About Sylvain Duchesne ... Webinar with Forrester analyst Brownlee Thomas: Guidance for your voice evolution planning
In this Webinar Brownlee Thomas, analyst with Forrester Research, will identify key trends you should be aware of, and Ian Wineberg, Associate Director - Marketing Solutions Development at Bell will share details of the Bell approach to voice evolution for enterprise clients. Date: October 28, 2008
... Voice evolution white paperInterested in finding the most efficient path for transitioning voice services to Unified Communications? Download this white paper authored by Bell Enterprise Associate Director Sandy Gillis and find out how! This resource takes a close look at:
Download this valuable resource and find out how your organization can benefit from Unified Communications planning! ... Network readiness assessment toolHow healthy is your network? Is it helping you to meet your business objectives? Is it ready to grow and support new applications? This questionnaire can help answer how ready your network is to meet the needs of the future, by helping you determine:
Download Network readiness assessment tool now! ... Voice communications assessment toolOrganizations everywhere are searching for ways to make voice communications more feature-rich and cost-effective, and striving to seamlessly integrate voice with other media. This self-assessment will help you to determine the current state of your enterprise's voice communications systems, and will help indicate how best to evolve them. |
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At this moment, a manufacturer is using a custom dashboard to draw data from their WAN and is making it available in real time to the people who need it across the enterprise. This allows their marketing executives to check results in each sales channel, and their production executives to monitor the thickness of injection moulds – at a facility on the other side of the world. 
Impact spoke with Sylvain Duchesne, an Associate Director and network specialist at Bell, to find out how enterprises are using the network in new ways to drive increased transparency, significant time savings and more. 
For organizations looking to evolve their voice communications the technology and services options available can be bewildering. Key to successfully evolving your voice environment is understanding the appropriate direction and timing for the adoption of new business communications solutions that will leverage the best of existing investments and resources, while laying a migration path for the future. 
