While network outages are not preventable, extended periods of downtime are avoidable
The cost of downtime continues to torment organizations despite evolving network technologies. Companies experience an average of 501 hours of network downtime every year which, on average, costs 3.6% of their annual revenue according to Infonetics.
As companies adopt digital transformation practices, the importance of maintaining non-stop connectivity to their branch offices and the valuable data grows. The need to preserve connections to critical revenue sources, IoT devices, and cloud-based applications places an even greater significance on a reliable Wide-Area Network (WAN), and on flexible network failover solutions.
What can cause downtime?
Terrestrial accidents are one of the most common causes of a network outage. Construction equipment can unintentionally dig up and cut through an enterprise’s wired network. In this scenario it is common that both the primary link and redundant failover line are cut because they enter the building through the same trench. Additionally, in the event of natural and manmade disasters, it often takes days to restore the connection resulting in a standstill of business.
Network downtime due to misconfigurations and service errors typically are resolved in a matter of hours rather than days. However, this type of outage can impact a wider area of customers. Two major outages occurred in the U.S. northeast that blanketed hundreds of thousands of customers in 2020 alone. Gartner predicts a major outage impacting more than 100 million users for longer than 24 hours within the next 5 years.
Outsmarting the outages
Organizations can avoid outages in their remote offices by building a network failover strategy that includes cellular wireless connections. Why is failover important? Cellular WAN links provide an alternate form of connection to avoid disruption from terrestrial accidents. By building options for connecting to multiple carriers, the best signal can be sourced and maintained during disaster scenarios. Resilient, secure wireless connections automatically link when an outage is detected and reestablish the original connection upon service restoration.
Cradlepoint has built and refined a cellular WAN service dedicated to optimizing uptime in branch locations.
