As a thriving business, you need the right technology in place to help your team stay productive. Your LAN (local area network) infrastructure plays a key role in your team’s ability to focus on their daily tasks. Therefore, you need to know when and why you need to upgrade your LAN infrastructure. Here are some of the key areas that you can’t afford to miss.
Your Network Runs Slow
If you or your staff experience slow speeds or other performance issues with your network, it could mean that your technology is out of date or you have simply outgrown your network. Modern applications require faster network speeds and the number of devices on the network is increasing exponentially. There will be an estimated 29.3 billion networked devices by 2023, up from 18.4 billion in 2018. A pressure on network demands means that networks can easily be overwhelmed, resulting in bottlenecks, reduced productivity and a frustrated workforce. Combined with the fact that some legacy networks can be running at 10Mbps speeds, you have a recipe for frustration. A modern network infrastructure can run at 10Gig+ speeds to handle the demands of today’s applications. It is better to get ahead of the curve when it comes to upgrading your network, so you can be prepared.
Outdated Tech Increases Your Risk of Downtime and Data Loss
If your network is outdated, then you are living on borrowed time. Old networks can fail without warning and they can also be hard to troubleshoot meaning that an outage could last for many days, leaving your workforce stranded and unproductive. Did you know that the average business experiences 14 hours of downtime each year, costing small enterprises more than $55,000/year and midsize companies more than $91,000/year in lost productivity and sales? Consider all the effects of outages on a business:
- Lost employee productivity due to malfunctioning systems or Internet (think in terms of salaries and benefits)
- Potential employee overtime costs to meet deadlines following a period of disruption
- Lost sales
- IT recovery costs
- Supply chain ripple effects
- Customer dissatisfaction
- Low employee morale or turnover due to stress/consequences of downtime
- Brand/loyalty damage
- Where applicable, compliance violations or materials lost
- Cost of restoring IT systems (some data may be forever lost)
You Are Already Using Legacy Technology
If your current network technology is already a bit dated, you should look to modernize it before performance is impacted. Newly released LAN technologies such as Wi-Fi 6 means your workforce can be more mobile and connect with faster speeds even in very dense environments. New networks can now be managed from the cloud, meaning a single networking engineering can manage many sites from a single location. No need for that expensive engineer to spend their time driving from site to site when they can do firmware updates, packet captures and cable testing all while being remote. According to the Robert Half Technology website, the salary range (as of May 2019) for a Network Administrator in Chicago is between $92,316 and $156,536. That doesn’t include benefits, training, outside consulting, bonuses, or other employee-related expenses. Most organizations factor an additional 30% for those extras, bringing the true cost of a full time Network Administrator into the range of between $120,010 and $203,497. Also, managing the network can take up a lot of time and bog down your IT staff with inventory management, change control processes, compliance standards, monitoring and alerting configurations and responding to alerts. Businesses can look to outsource IT support to free up their IT staff to work on other important projects while also helping them implement more modern network solutions.
As cybersecurity attacks become more sophisticated, it is important to take advantage of new LAN technology, which allows for greater security, visibility and control over the network. Next generation wireless access points and switches can now layer on security and this, combined with faster speeds, makes the end user more productive and more secure.
If you are ready to upgrade your network, request your free consultation with TPx. They specialize in MSx Managed Networks, which makes them your go-to experts for managing LAN, WAN, and access points.