Your network doesn't work
Go from spending $300,000 to $50,000 and have the flexibility of using any Internet connection you want.
How do you cut the cost of keeping remote workers connected? Ann Sorensen, business development manager at telecommunications consultancy Intelligent Networks, faced just such a dilemma with one of her clients, an insurance company with 800 people in its main office and a couple hundred more scattered in several regional outposts. The company was spending tens of thousands of dollars each month for its remote workers to connect to its network.
"The company's home workers dial into a modem bank via an 800 number, and the company spends $30,000 per month on dial-in costs," says Sorensen. "But by implementing a new IP-based virtual private network, we would cut those costs by two-thirds."
A VPN is a private, secure data tunnel on the Internet. Many companies already use VPNs to connect their networks of remote offices. If your company already has one, a new Internet-based VPN will hugely reduce your network maintenance costs.
OpenReach provides software that will transform any collection of broadband Internet connections into a VPNâ€"without using outdated, expensive technology. "We've seen companies that are spending $250,000 to $300,000 a year on eight location networks with file sharing and e-mail consolidation," says Mark Tuomenoksa, OpenReach CEO and founder. Using his system, he estimates companies can slash that amount to $50,000 and have the flexibility of using any Internet connection they want.
Netscan iPublishing is a Net-based publishing company based in Falls Church, Virginia. Its editorial operations are in Jacksonville, Florida. Editors send a huge volume of data to the home office every day, which they had been doing using FTP. "It was slow, unreliable, and time-consuming for our employees," says the company's president, Harvey Golomb. "Via FTP, the transfer took at least an hour and a half per day, and it would often have to be redone because the system was unreliable."
When Netscan iPublishing switched to an OpenReach VPN a year ago, Golomb saw the benefits immediately. "It now takes 15 minutes to do daily file transfers, and the system is completely reliable." The VPN's cost: $300 per month for three offices.
But much of the cost of maintaining a network comes from buying and maintaining the equipment. Fast servers are just as important as speedy network connectionsâ€"and they're also some of the most expensive pieces of hardware your company will ever buy. Without an asset-management system in place you could lose thousands of dollars on each machine.
"It's really important to have an understanding of the current and future value of your equipment," says Brian Clarke, vice president of pricing and asset management at IDC. "You don't want to be sitting on a number of servers that you aren't fully using. Because today [your used equipment] may be worth a few thousand dollars apiece, but 10 months from now, it may be worth next to nothing."
