Rightsizing the network

Enterprise Wi-Fi networks can radically alter the ways organisations deliver information to their employees, explains Roger Hockaday.

“The pressure for efficiency and savings in today's economic environment makes the deployment of wireless networks an imperative for organisations of all sizes”
-Roger Hockaday

In a time of economic restraint, IT organisations are under pressure to do more, with less. Budgets are flat – or falling – and companies are forced to look carefully at their network infrastructure and ask if it provides too much, at too greater cost? The need to cut expenditure and be more efficient has resulted in many organisations reassessing traditional approaches to networking: Ethernet to every desktop has been the mainstay of enterprise networking for over 20 years, but it is increasingly looking like a technology that is fast approaching its 'best before' date.

High-speed Wi-Fi (known as 802.11n) only became a standard in 2009 but already accounts for nearly a quarter of all enterprise wireless sales. Improvements in signaling and a much higher data throughput means it offers not just a far more reliable and faster connection than 802.11a/b/g wireless networks, but it can be used as an alternative to traditional wired networks. An alternative that is much lower cost to install and operate.

A modern wireless network based on 802.11n offers:

• A reduction in power consumption of 90-95 percent compared to an equivalent wired solution
• Price per megabit is 30 percent cheaper than traditional wireless solutions
• The opportunity to create a 'blended edge' network – a network offering wired and wireless connectivity at 50 percent of the cost of a wired network

Migrating to a 'blended edge' of wireless and wired networking is now a well-established business practice; wireless networks are very secure, they meet the needs of a workforce that expects mobility within the office, and they can save considerable budget even when used to supplement an existing wireless network – a process known as Rightsizing. The experience of organisations who have deployed wireless networks is that users readily switch over from wired to wireless connections. Microsoft operates one of the largest wireless networks worldwide, with over 11,000 Aruba wireless LAN access points. It recognises that three-quarters of their employees use the wireless LAN every day – and 70 percent of employees believe that the WLAN saves them at least five hours of work time a week.

In a telling sign, more CEOs are now directing their respective IT organisations to investigate all, or mostly wireless access techniques when moving to new offices. The experiences of consultants KPMG is a salutary lesson to organisations planning to deploy 'wired only' networks. Their plan to move 2800 employees into a new purpose-built 60,000 square metre office near Amsterdam called for 55 wired switch chassis with 260x 48-port switch cards and 18,000 cables at a total cost of €4 million. Instead, they adopted a new rightsized network edge, halving the size of their wired network and deploying a pervasive wireless LAN with 240x 802.11n Aruba access points. The firm realized a €1.4 million saving, and expects an estimated €530,000 drop in recurring operational costs each year. The savings in operational costs were more than enough to cover the costs of the new wireless LAN.

Even those organisations that already have a wired infrastructure in place can benefit from rightsizing and see savings in operational expenditures. Companies benefit from significant reductions in annual maintenance costs from stopping support on unused switch ports (some 20-40 percent of access ports are typically not used day to day, and every 48 ports can cost €1400 per annum in maintenance fees). Organisations also benefit because they no longer have to budget €1000 or more for each employee move, add or change. The benefits of WLAN technology are well understood; users have demonstrated an affinity for the technology, and clearly prefer it over wired networking infrastructure. The pressure for efficiency and savings in today's economic environment makes the deployment of wireless networks an imperative for organisations of all sizes.

Roger Hockaday is the Director of Marketing for Aruba Networks, EMEA. The author of numerous articles on wireless networking, and a well-known speaker, he combines extensive experience of wireless (and wired) networking with the application to real world business.

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