Building utilities such as electricity, water, and heating are critical in operating a profitable business; any service interruption has a serious effect on operations. This is also true for business processes that require a robust infrastructure, to deliver information on-demand. If the components needed to power your business processes are missing or inadequate, overall performance will suffer.
Today’s network infrastructure must be optimized to meet current business demands, as well as sustaining future growth. A well-designed network cabling solution provides the infrastructure to support your business. Use these five to steps to help you evaluate your structured cabling needs.
- Determine current cabling needs: Prior to any technology implementation, rollout, or upgrade, identify what network cabling infrastructure you need to make it successful and get up and running quickly. This assessment includes understanding the number of endpoints and devices that require connectivity, as well as whether you need broadband services. Your staff require a highly available cabling infrastructure in order to manage business tasks efficiently and effectively.
- Anticipate future growth: Another key feature of a structured cabling project is the ability to sustain predicted growth over the next few years. Accounting for expansion on the front end of the project makes future scalability easier to implement.
- Know your facility’s layout: Your facility’s physical layout significantly influences your company’s network cabling needs. It’s critical to identify the type of cables used, to ensure they can withstand elements like dust, dirt, and heat. Protecting cables with the correct materials is also important and requires knowledge of cabling technology. A comprehensive understanding of your facility alleviates implementation challenges.
- Prepare for the unexpected: The way companies do business is constantly changing, especially during unpredictable economic times. Businesses are searching for ways to increase efficiency and reduce costs, which leads to shifts in business processes. A business process change often requires an enhancement to technology. Your cabling infrastructure needs to be able to handle any new changes in processes. For example, business travel may be reduced, putting more emphasis on video conferencing. Network cabling that already supports video conferencing without additional bandwidth allows resources to help with training and functionality.
- Understand your business processes: Company processes are fundamental to your success. If you house a call center in your facility, for example, you’ll need to focus on voice and data cabling, so employees and customers experience limited downtime. Or if you are implementing HSIA (high speed internet access) for guests and staff, which often required fiber optic cabling, an idea of how and when it will be used will help in the design of the structured cabling system.
Whether your company is building a new facility or updating a current one, it’s essential to address cabling infrastructure. Following the five steps above will assist you in selecting the right voice and data cabling solution for your business.
Make sure your business is prepared prior to implementing a structured cabling solution and your network infrastructure will be able to handle future demands without having to upgrade for years.
What challenges does your organization face with your current network infrastructure? Share your thoughts in the comments.
5 Steps to Evaluating Your Structured Cabling Needs was posted at Optimize IT. | http://www.datatrend.com/optimize-it