Business continuity, a guide to keeping your services live
Communication networks are the lifeblood of the modern business.
The technology that feeds and supports the flow of information is
critical. However, the sheer volume of information that the modern
enterprise needs to transport around its offices and people is
growing at an alarming rate. These factors combine to drive one
clear and pressing need – businesses have to develop a continuity
policy to ensure that they can maintain the flow of data to the
teams that use it, or risk losing out to competitors who do.
However, before investing heavily in a totally resilient solution,
businesses need to consider the range of options available to them
to maintain the continuity of services in times of difficulty.
Information Technology lies at the very heart of today’s
organisations and many companies are now so dependent on their
networks that they take them for granted. In today’s 24/7 digital
economy, just imagine the business implications of critical data
being lost, internet and email access being unavailable or your
internal network going down.
The impact of the unexpected on your business, whether in the
form of malicious damage such as hacking or some kind of natural
disaster, can be devastating in the networked world. Take for
example the 2007 flash floods across the UK. Following the wettest
May to July on record, approximately 7,100 businesses were flooded
and the resulting damage cost an estimated £3 billion1. However,
this figure fails to take into account the cost of lost business
during that period, when some companies were unable to operate a
normal (if any) service, or the damage to reputation that the
inability to communicate caused. No-one can predict the future, but
by carefully planning in advance you can ensure that your business
is in the best possible position, if and when disruption
occurs.
To meet resiliency requirements for coping with both unexpected
events and increasing volumes of data, today’s businesses require
more than Next Generation Network capability alone. They need a
combination of robust network capability and a next generation
service mindset from their telecoms provider. When it comes to
business resiliency, it’s not simply a case of ‘one size fits all’.
ntl:Telewest Business closely collaborates with its customers and
tailors its services to meet their needs. The next generation of
business resiliency is here.
What level of resilience is needed?
Different industries have unique requirements for resilience. In
the banking industry, for example, access to accurate, real-time
buying and selling data is critical and business continuity and
resiliency are considered so important that they are subject to
specific regulations such as Basel II. However, for the majority of
businesses, the rules and regulations are not so strict, and yet
the implications of a network collapse without sufficient backup
systems can be equally severe. This is particularly true when you
consider that, according to the London Chamber of Commerce and
Industry, 80 per cent of small to medium sized businesses go out of
business within 18 months of experiencing a major network problem
and 90 per cent of businesses that lose data in a disaster are
forced to shut within two years.
The indisputable fact is that all business premises, no matter
what the organisation’s size or industry, face the risk of
disasters and they need to bring certainty to how they store and
use their information. Firms need to be able to move their data
around freely and ensure that it is 100 per cent backed up from
every site, minimising the exposure to risk at any one site and
making sure that the most important data is prioritised.
What types of network meet the requirement?
Network capability and flexibility provide the technology
platform for next generation telecoms providers to roll out a
resilient service. As well as being able to withstand unexpected
events, today’s networks need to be able to cope with the
everincreasing amounts of information being transported by today’s
businesses. Their needs have extended from just email and web
browsing to encompass multimedia applications, image-driven,
user-generated content and video. In order to cope with these
burgeoning volumes of data and the swift pace of operational
change, networks need to be both extremely resilient and scalable.
Rapidly growing workforces require constant, uninterrupted access
to business resources and only a Next Generation Network can
provide the flexibility and resilience required.
ntl:Telewest Business’ £13 billion Next Generation Network was
built specifically with the demands of the digital age in mind and,
based on fibre-optic technology, it is highly resilient. The Next
Generation Network is capable of delivering the next generation IP
and Ethernet services required by today’s fast-moving business and,
as bandwidth can be increased quickly and painlessly in line with
demand, scalability issues are overcome. In order to significantly
reduce the volume of faults on their networks, today’s telcos also
need to engage far earlier in proactive network management. By
constantly monitoring its network, ntl:Telewest Business ensures
that potential issues can be identified before they develop into
problems. As a result, both the network’s performance and the
user’s experience are significantly improved.
How can every eventuality be covered?
Maintaining business continuity is not as simple as deploying
two separate links to your business sites, there are a number of
considerations that have to be taken into account. How far a
customer wants to go in assuring resilience depends on the
importance of their information assets and their budget, but there
are four key business continuity measures that can be taken into
consideration.
As there are two UK-wide access networks, ntl:Telewest Business’
and BT’s, it stands to reason that if information is your
organisation’s lifeblood you should not trust all of your services
to just one network. Having an alternative access network in place
ensures that critical applications continue to run even if one
provider has a major outage. An alternative transmission path can
also handle unexpected peaks in traffic and provide protection
against denial of service attacks, which are designed to swamp
networks with traffic and cause them to buckle.
The second business continuity measure is eliminating a single
point of failure for the availability of voice and data services.
Rather than relying on a single network provider to deliver
connectivity between a site and the rest of the private network or
the internet, businesses can run multiple links to their sites,
guaranteeing up-time should one of the lines be inadvertently
damaged and rendered unusable. In the event of network connectivity
being destroyed over one connection, services can seamlessly divert
to the backup connection, maintaining continuous data transfer and
call availability.
One of the most basic disaster recovery tools that businesses
should consider is spreading their risks across the network. By
creating a mirrored system in which all information and
applications are regularly and automatically backed up at different
points on the network, businesses can ensure that information is
protected in the event that one part of the network experiences an
outage.
Multiple Ethernet connections into a Virtual Private Network
(VPN) with any-to-any connectivity enable organisations to
decentralise their IT across multiple sites and replicate their
business-critical data. If a problem does occur, whether it is a
natural disaster or simply a power failure, employees should be
able to work from home and log onto their VPN remotely, safe in the
knowledge that the network is secure and work can continue as
usual, albeit off-site. This any-to-any connectivity overcomes the
needs for backup circuits.
Finally, in the event of one of an organisation’s main circuits
going down, forcing all data to run over the other and increasing
the risk of a network bottleneck, the prioritisation of critical
data is essential. The application of up to eight classes of
service over the ntl:Telewest Business network, with predefined
Quality of Service (QoS) parameters, will also ensure that business
critical data is delivered in advance of lower priority traffic
such as internet data. This way organisations can ensure their
business critical applications continue to perform at optimum
levels, even in adverse conditions.
With such an array of business continuity options available,
organisations require a telco provider that’s prepared to sit down
and discuss the most appropriate solution for their unique needs,
risks and budget. ntl:Telewest Business collaborates closely with
all sizes of business, not just its largest customers with big
communication budgets. Consultative and technologically-savvy local
service teams, both at the presales and project management stages,
work hand-in-glove with the customer to ensure they receive the
most appropriate solutions for their business.
How can businesses design and provision truly resilient
networks?
True business resilience can only be attained when network
capability is fused with a high level of consultative input at the
stage of designing new network infrastructures. Until now, the
legacy telco practice has been to keep customers at arm’s length
from the services they use and act as merely a circuit provider,
rather than responding to customers’ requirements. The next
generation of telecoms providers need to invest in their service
delivery, and not solely their network, ensuring that their
customers feel connected to their telco teams as well as their
network.
As a next generation telecoms provider, ntl:Telewest Business is
committed to sitting down with organisations, listening to and
understanding their individual requirements. This way it can help
the customer implement measures appropriate to the risk associated
with the type of traffic on its network, with a design that
reflects the confines of the budget.
A customer-centric mindset and ‘can do’ attitude ensures that
ntl:Telewest Business collaborates with its customers from the
start, helping to plan, design, and implement their networks. But
it doesn’t stop there, many of the same teams remain all the way
through integration and while the network is running. No one can
predict the future, but by working with a telecoms provider that
has such a Next Generation Network and a customer-centric mindset,
you’ll be better prepared for any eventuality.
