The Power of Computer Net

The computer network has made significant advances over the last 30 years; no longer is it an infrastructure for facilitating e-mail & surfing the Web. The network is now being utilized in such a way that it is literally saving businesses billions of pounds every year by increasing user productivity & reducing operational costs. Below is a list of common applications businesses use their network for.

Applications

Business has increasingly become reliant on e-mail over the last decade, with a variety of client / server e-mail applications available to select from; historically in the past people used the postal service & rings to do business, nowadays the number method of communication is e-mail, according to Gartner.

The power of the database was finally realized when database services became available over the network; limitless organizations use bespoke solutions to manage themselves, whether the task be purchasing, administrative, sales, accounting, payroll etc... Most are driven by SQL, which in my experience, is still the most robust solution available today.

Attached to a significant percentage of local area networks (LAN) used for business, at least in our experience, are network capable printers, usually laserjet. Despite the talk of paperless offices back in the 90's, there is still an actual need for network attached printing services where clients still need to be invoiced & companies still write letters.

Network Storage

Lots of are the benefits of network attached storage over local storage, or even worse, a paper based filing method. The most obvious to me is the flexibility it provides when accessing the knowledge, you can sort knowledge in to logical categories & interpret the knowledge more quickly. The knowledge can be encrypted to make positive it doesn't fall in to the wrong hands, which when compared to a filing cabinet, makes for a way more professional approach to handling sensitive knowledge. Nowadays, the storage options available are so lovely that you don't must worry about the drive failing, there are a lot of options such as RAID which guarantee the integrity of your knowledge.

Security

In our experience, the immense majority of small to medium sized businesses within the United Kingdom that use video surveillance equipment are backing up to VHS tapes using cameras with poor picture quality, in low levels of light. Nowadays, there is surveillance systems that are connected to the network & back up to network storage, sometimes also backing up to offsite network storage. Modern day surveillance cameras are skilful to recording in low levels of light, such as 0.4 Lux which is a measurement of light similar to low lit residential street lighting.

Voice

So plenty of businesses they deal with are still using a mainstream phone carrier & paying far much for their voice calls. This is insanity. With the popularity of SIP trunks on the increase, businesses have an excellent opportunity to streamline their phone expenditure by placing those calls over their network. A typical organisation will make back the cost of the necessary hardware within a couple of years where their phone bill will be significantly reduced. The quality of their voice calls are not compromised & the features that come with IP phone systems are useful to say the least; voice mail for everyone, hunt groups for sales teams, automated attendants for customers to get through to the right person, even music on hold.

Video

 as the postal services worldwide have become less about communication & more about the delivery of products bought online, where electronic mail has superseded it, they will also notice a trend moving away from standard voice calls, moving towards video calls. plenty of the mobile phone manufacturers are already getting behind video calls in a immense way; it is highly likely that in0 years time video calling will be the standard. All of this is likely to happen over the network as inhouse technical teams lose the fight to keep only knowledge traffic on the network.

Monitoring

The loss to business of people checking their webmail or doing things like reading status updates on Facebook in lieu of doing their work, is giant. As the lure of social networking sites increases, so will the employers require to monitor their staff. There is already programs that let your boss to see what you are doing on your workstation; they may already be watching you waste company time & resources on their new IP video surveillance process. Your slacking days are numbered.