My guess is that in under an hour your colleagues would start to huddle in angry little groups, and mutter gruffly that they need email back fast because it looks amateurish to be without it.
But finding out the reason for the outage could be tricky, because there are a lot of different pieces of infrastructure that make it possible for email to flow into your computer. Most of those pieces are a part of your network, and are rather complex.
Now consider the fact that your network is also bringing you Internet access: every web page you look at during a day is carried over the same wires and through the same networking appliances as your email. If you’ve adopted voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) your network is therefore also carrying your phone calls. Your web servers, e-commerce applications and myriad other modern business tools all rely on your network.
Clearly, your network is very important: if it experiences glitches or – heaven forbid – goes down the consequences could be far worse than testy staff demanding the return of their email.
The sensible response to this is to have someone who looks after your network, and once your organisation reaches a certain size you may well be able to afford that person. But that person also needs to sleep and is entitled to holidays. Your staff are also unlikely to possess strong skills in every aspect of a network’s operation. The cause of your email outage, for example, could be your connection to carriers, a wide area network, a local area network or perhaps the ways your servers stress your network.
Few IT professionals have a complete grasp of all these technologies.That’s why IBM believes managed network services are a more-than-useful offering. These services see us keep an eye on your network – all of it – around the clock. When your network experts are sleeping, our team of experts can spot glitches or outages. And because we have lots of people – with lots of skills – chances are we’ll be able to identify and fix any problems before they become an incident that turns your team into an angry mob.
Managed services aren’t just about monitoring: we can also do things like stay in touch with software updates to your network infrastructure and implement them for you. We can also help with upgrades or chat to carriers on your behalf to arrange new services. While we do this, your networking people and the rest of your IT team can concentrate on value adding and innovation.
As it happens, innovation is also easier to do than placating an angry mob of email-deprived workers. And IBM doesn’t have managed services for that!
More information about the
Managed Network Services offered by IBM can be
found here.