5 WAYS TO AVOID NETWORK FAILURE IN THE DIGITAL ERA

Today, network performance is paramount to doing business. Internal and external interactions often include live video conferencing, voice calls, video streaming and massive uploads and downloads from the Internet. On top of that, many businesses use their network to conduct purchases directly with their customers.

Unlike the networks of yesterday, all these services are moving into the cloud. While this creates simplicity for the user, finding and fixing a performance problem no simple task for the business.

The Cost Of Downtime

We already know that downtime can have a tremendous impact on your business. The longer you go without access to your data and business systems, the greater the ﬁnancial implications are. As network complexity increases, downtime can seem inevitable. And for every dropped call and network outage there is a cost to the business, whether it’s a poor user experience or lost revenue.

While 51% of outages are avoidable, each year companies lose $26.5 billion in revenue due to IT downtime―either planned or unplanned. When there are critical application failures on the network, the costs can hit a staggering 1 million dollars per hour lost in Fortune 100 companies with 98% of organizations saying a single hour of downtime costs over $100K.

How To Stay On Top

Follow these five best practices to avoid costly downtime and keep your business running smoothly:

Monitor for insight. On a Mitel network, often what seems like a voice quality issue is in fact caused by a failing or misconfigured router or switch. By knowing where the problem is, you can proactively prevent a voice quality issue that leads to a poor user experience.
Test continuously for faster problem resolution. A poorly performing device can be difficult to detect and chasing after the cause wastes valuable resources. Take a proactive approach with network testing that places synthetic calls, so you’ll be alerted before a problem can impact users in the field. When a problem does occur, being able to test directly from the monitoring system’s dashboard to find the root cause quickly will help you avoid costly downtime.
Use monitoring systems designed for business communications. When your network management system specializes in unified communications (UC), you gain valuable insight into how events on your network impact voice communications.
Go deeper with analytics. Usage reporting like SIP trunk and port usage can tell you in advance when it’s time to expand your network or add new licenses to maintain optimal performance. Alarm analytics can inform you of the most important issues on your network faster, so you can plan effectively and make more informed business decisions.
Prevent an aging infrastructure with software updates. Software Assurance can be a cost-effective way to deploy the latest updates, which protect against aging infrastructure, security vulnerabilities and interoperability problems.