Network concepts and applications

Networking Solution

A reliable and flexible network is one of the most important tools that a 21st-century business can have in its competitive toolbox. This is especially true if the company is one with more than one office, and even more especially true if the different offices are geographically distant from one another. Metric Machine Parts and Supplies Corporation is being badly served by its current network provider. The system being proposed here would eliminate (or at least drastically reduce) problems with the current system while adding positive elements that are entirely absent from the current network.

The first decision -- and indeed the most important decision -- is a managerial one rather than a technical one. Does the company wish to continue to outsource its networking needs or should it shift to an onsite it department. The current network system was chosen when the business was smaller in terms of sales as well as in terms of having to communicate with an international sales force and customer base. That smaller version of the company found it economical to outsource a number of services rather than having to pay someone in-house and have him or her sit idle a great deal of the time when there was no it work to be done.

However, these conditions no longer obtain. While having noted above that the decision to outsource or move to an in-house solution is, of course, a managerial one, I would nonetheless like to offer my suggestion here, which is to switch to an in-house it department. The downside of such a move is that it is more expensive. However, this in fact may not be true. While hiring an it staff and making room for them in which to work, as well as buying updated equipment will require a not-insubstantial amount of capital outlay in a short period of time. If this outlay has to be financed, there will be the additional (and at least temporarily ongoing) cost of the financing.

However, balanced against this must be the fact that while these upfront costs are significantly higher than the monthly fee paid to the current service provider, there is the very-much ongoing cost to the firm of the current inefficient network. The company is almost certainly losing customers when they grow frustrated with the delays in placing orders and receiving products, always a serious problem but especially so when a company is expanding at this rate. Moreover, there are hidden but no doubt significant costs in terms of wasted employee time.

In addition, it professions will be up-to-date on software and hardware options, a fact that will reduce wastes of both time and money throughout the operational model.

The costs of customer and employee frustration are extremely hard to measure, which is no doubt one reason why many companies continue to outsource their it work. However, an accurate (or at least as accurate as is reasonably possible) assessment of all of the costs that are embedded in outsourced networks leads me to make a very strong recommendation towards an in-house it department (Banks & Card, 2008, p.49).

This shift would substantially increase the reliability of the network along with being far more flexible and (related to the former) far more scalable. Thus the system could grow to meet the company's needs in sync with those needs, neither falling behind nor wasting money by buying new hardware and software in advance of need. An important advantage of waiting of this last is that software and hardware purchased just at the time of need will be the most recently updated and therefore will provide benefits for longer. Adding technical capacity to a network at the moment when it is needed increases both the reliability and the accuracy of a network, thus providing a remedy for two of the most serious problems that the company had been experiencing with the current network provider (Resilience, n.d.).