In a typical year, an enterprise IT department will deal with any number of network disruptions that can derail business operations—severe weather events, cyberattacks, sluggish performance from bandwidth-straining cloud applications. In response, IT tends to behave reactively, on a case-by-case basis, to restore their networks. Some may even have business continuity plans in place.
With the global pandemic driving entire sectors of business and society to work from home, continuity is now critical in order to keep working, learning and living. Continuous network connectivity is considered an essential utility, alongside electricity and running wa
But in reality, the key to ensuring business continuity is taking a proactive approach—preventing outages from happening in the first place.
With the rapid adoption of remote and hybrid work models, continuity is now critical to keep us working, learning and living. Continuous network connectivity is considered an essential utility, alongside electricity and running water. It follows, then, that ensuring business continuity means ensuring network connectivity. You can’t have one without the other.
The catastrophic costs of downtime
According to a recent study, outages cost 60% of organizations at least $100,000 per hour, while another one-third of tech leaders surveyed said that their hourly downtime costs reach upwards of $500,000. One-fifth of survey respondents claimed that outages cost their enterprises a whopping $1 million an hour.
Those are just the financial costs—add in the qualitative costs of disrupted routines, reduced productivity, and employee and customer frustration, and the impacts of network downtime become incalculable.
Why MPLS isn’t up to the job anymore
When introduced, MPLS was an ideal network option for organizations that ran multiple business-critical applications at several locations. It converges voice and data traffic over connections that are isolated from the public internet, while offering basic control over applications.
Now, network traffic is traversing public broadband as more organizations shift apps and services to cloud, multi-cloud and SaaS providers. Add the proliferation of connected devices and the transition to remote work, and it’s easy to see how shifting application architectures and the hunger for bandwidth have driven MPLS networks to the breaking point.
Unified communications: A critical application for any organization
Enterprises are now obligated to provide their home-based workers with the tools they
As enterprises seek to equip their remote, hybrid and in-office workers alike with the tools they need to succeed in a digital-first world, they quickly find that their outdated, premises-based phone systems can’t support the real-time responsiveness and flexibility employees require.
A cloud-based unified communications as a service (UCaaS) solution offers the voice, video, conferencing and messaging capabilities that keep employees productive and engaged with customers. Remote teams can collaborate securely in real time, from any device, over multiple channels at once.
Wherever employees work, security must follow
Since the massive migration to remote work in the cloud, the network perimeter has dissolved—there is no “inside the corporate network” and “public internet.” Consequently, the old model of routing network traffic through a centralized security stack is inefficient.
To effectively prevent downtime from network threats—without creating complexity and latency for users—enterprises need a security-as-a-service model that incorporates the key elements of SASE (secure access service edge). They need security services that simplify secure remote access, content filtering, intrusion prevention and application control and unify them into one robust, easy-to-manage solution.
SD-WAN: The bedrock of a business continuity plan
As a software-defined network overlay, SD-WAN not only improves network performance but also supports increasingly complex network architectures. When paired with active-active connectivity, SD-WAN delivers seamless failover and up to 100% uptime for critical applications, allowing organizations to offer superior customer and employee experiences.
IT gains greater network optimization and manageability—as well as improved security and data center protection—while reducing downtime to near zero.
Get peace of mind from maximum uptime
Today, business continuity matters more than ever. That’s why Windstream Enterprise has assembled a full suite of cost-effective, resilient Business Continuity solutions, including:
- SD-WAN: for high network availability and uptime
- OfficeSuite UC®: for secure, cloud-based collaboration
- Managed Network Security (MNS): for a comprehensive suite of security services
- WE Connect: our customizable, central management portal that adapts to your workflows and preferences
See how Windstream Enterprise’s comprehensive solutions deliver the highest level of network resiliency and business continuity available.
