When Networks Go Down, Cost of Business Goes Up

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington state was called "a dream come true" during its grand opening as the world's third-longest suspension bridge in 1940. Four months later, it was a virtual nightmare.

In the early morning of November 7, strong winds off Puget Sound blasted "Galloping Gertie" broadside, causing the bridge platform to undulate in waves up to 5 feet. Over the next three hours, conditions deteriorated and the bridge began to "gallop."

At 11:02 a.m., a 600-foot section broke free from its cables and plummeted 195 feet into the water below. With it went the lifeline connecting rural peninsula areas to commercial centers in Tacoma and Seattle. Local economies took a decade to recover. The bridge also had been a vital link between the Navy shipyard in Bremerton and Army installations at McChord Field and Fort Lewis, and its loss affected the U.S. military long after World War II.

When infrastructures that link communities go down, the repercussions are usually felt wide and long. That's especially
true in enterprise networking. In 2005, market research specialist Infonetics found large enterprises lose up to 16 percent of their annual revenues to network downtime. That survey determined the average financial institution loses $222 million — much of it associated to application problems over the network.

Reliability in your network infrastructure simply isn't a luxury. In the 21st Century, few companies can afford to bring systems down for extensive maintenance. Daily newspapers are a good example. When you produce a complete publication every day of every year, time pressures can become severe. The McClatchy Company, which recently made headlines of its own by becoming the second-largest U.S. newspaper chain, turned to ProCurve Networking when network problems began to affect production at its California properties.

"ProCurve switches have eliminated all of the bottlenecks and bandwidth issues we faced with our former networks," says Tim Connors, Infrastructure Manager for BeeIT, McClatchy's IT support organization. "As a result, reliability has gone way up. In the past, deadlines were missed due to network downtime. We don't have those problems anymore."

As enterprise networks increasingly become public conduits for business success, any downtime is lost opportunity — for efficiency, production, productivity, revenue and more. But the biggest risk is a lost customer, because that loss is felt well after the network outage. In a customer-centric business like ProCurve, network reliability and resiliency are essential. That's why most of our products carry full lifetime warranties and replacement plans. We even test to assure they'll perform no matter how challenging the environment.

Many vendors seek splashy, cutting-edge technologies — frequently through acquisitions. The result is often a disjointed set of offerings not designed to work together, which leads to reliability problems. Unfortunately, "bleeding edge" technologies can quickly lead to pure infrastructure hemorrhaging. ProCurve Networking assures reliability by pushing proven leading-edge technologies into the mainstream. We don't just create and promote industry standards; we use them extensively in our products.

But that isn't the end of the story. Our security and systems management tools offer a unified approach throughout the network. I believe network security and management are not distinct products; they are consistent and robust capabilities woven into the fabric of all our solutions.

Our unified security solutions offer consistent protection and control across wired and wireless environments, unique in networking. Our unified network management tools enable consistent administration of infrastructure assets. As networks become more complex, the need to simplify and align security and administration capabilities becomes more important. Why? Inconsistent network management leads to higher probabilities of downtime — and delays in getting resolution compound the problem.

Robinsons Land Corporation (RLC), which owns and operates the most successful chains of shopping malls in the Philippines, faced those issues. The company's IT department was under pressure to perform at a high level all day, seven days a week. Their network supported the organization's 24-hour parking facility and hotel operations, its real-time ERP application, document imaging solutions, Web sites, point-of-sale systems and email. Because of the high traffic and loads, RLC's network was prone to continual failures.

"The hours and days spent on troubleshooting our previous network had eaten up so much of my staff's time that we were really counting on ProCurve to provide an inherently stable product and completely eliminate network downtime," says Mel Cabreros, Corporate Information Technology Director for RLC. "We simply could not afford to spend any more time fixing our network. If a unit went down, we needed to have a replacement up and running in no time. That's where ProCurve's lifetime warranty and advance replacement service really swung it for us.

"As an organization, we have been freed up to focus on delivering our business objectives – for the first time in a long time."

That kind of freedom from downtime doesn't come by accident. ProCurve purposely invests to assure all our products are reliable and easy to use. That investment has produced an ironic benefit for us — fundamentally lower costs in production and support. We pass these savings along to our customers, who are able to enjoy solutions that lead the industry in reliability and cost of ownership.

When your network is reliable and secure, the bridge linking people becomes a vital part of your business plan. Don't wait until your infrastructure collapses to assess the true cost of building it right. Consider this: Replacing the Tacoma Narrows Bridge took 10 years.

John McHugh is Vice President and General Manager of ProCurve Networking. Under his leadership, ProCurve has risen from number eleven in the networking marketplace to the number-two position in the market, based on worldwide port shipments.

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