What would happen if your ONLY Internet connection were to go down in the office?
No business can afford to be offline in the current day and age. Think about how often you use the internet for your day-to-day business activities. If the plug is pulled, how badly will your business be affected? Every hour you spend offline is an hour you are missing out on market feeds, web browsing, incoming orders, emails, and much more. Business continuity is of paramount importance, which is why you need to have measures in place to deal with such a situation if it arises.
Imagine a typical week at your business. Now, think about what would happen if you had to re-live this week without your Internet connection. You wouldn’t be able to respond to any customer queries, which would impact negatively on your reputation. You may miss out on numerous business opportunities, which could have been lucrative. You would struggle to keep up with daily news and trends relating to your industry. Emails would be left untended, you’d be unable to make purchase orders, which could lead to stock depletion, and this just scratches the surface. It seems crazy that one change could make such a massive impact, but business operations have become heavily reliant on the Internet – of course, some industries more than others.
To ensure you don’t have to experience all of the above, you need to have a backup solution in place. There are many different ways you can go about this. Some companies have developed a redundancy solution that is tailored to suit each client, ensuring they never have to worry about being offline for an extended period of time.
You also need to make sure that you have a reliable Internet connection in place, to begin with. Take a look at SD WAN. This starts for Software-Defined Wide Area Network, and it is a new way for you to manage and optimize your network. It was designed to overcome the rigidity of MPLS services and high bandwidth costs. The result is more secure, high performing, and efficient Internet, so this is definitely something that all business should consider.
There are a few other things you can do if your Internet is letting you down. This includes the following:
- Optimize your web for a slow connection
- Try a new DNS server
- Turn off bandwidth-hogging apps and plugins
- Fix your Wi-Fi signal
- Troubleshoot your hardware
- Check your speeds and plan
All things considered, there is no denying that all businesses need to make a careful effort to make sure that they do everything they can to minimize downtime. In the current digital age, a mere hour offline could be detrimental to your company. If you follow the advice that has been presented above, you have a good starting point.
