Think Ahead: Add Intelligence To Your Infrastructure

摘要

Infrastructure gear is a bare necessity, but try convincing those ROI-obsessive types holding the purse strings. It's difficult to map a direct link from a beefy new switch to business benefits like cost savings, customer satisfaction or new revenue-producing services. Still, IT pros know the bottom line: If your network is not fast and reliable enough, the applications that enable all the above simply aren't going to work. Even after you've established that building a reliable infrastructure is good business, it's likely that the money spigot will still be set at a trickle. So it's vital to plan for future needs carefully to wring every bit of benefit from your infrastructure dollar. In fact, through 2005, 80 percent of enterprises attempting to add real-time capabilities to their networks will seriously underestimate networking requirements and will have to make last-minute additions, upgrades or modifications, according to a March 2003 Gartner report.