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Virgin Media Business Top five industrial sectors

The UK’s top industrial sectors by contribution to GDP, and their network demands

1.

The UK’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is dominated by the services sector, accounting for some 76.2% of total GDP, according to EconomyWatch, a research firm specialising in statistics from the world of economics and finance. This dominant percentage indicates the country’s drift in the second half of the twentieth century, away from global leadership in heavy industry and manufacturing.

2.

As a subset of the UK services sector, financial services alone account for around 40% of GDP, despite the impact of the recent recession. The UK’s various network operators compete to offer low latency connection to banks, which now rely on networks to transport key data to and from often far-flung data centres.

3.

The UK’s retail sector is another major services area, making up around 8% of GDP, and employing about 11% of the country’s workforce. Although less reliant on low latency, retailers do value resilience in a network. Security is also vital in order that customer information does not go astray.

4-5.

The UK’s heavy industry and manufacturing sectors amount to 22.8% of GDP between them. Although they are not traditional major network users, both sectors are discovering the savings to be realised from hosting data and applications in the Cloud. This allows them to ensure business continuity if their own systems should fail for any reason. It also helps them avoid the high capital and operational expenditure associated with leasing dedicated lines for their secure networking needs.

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