October 8, 2010 – (HOSTSEARCH.COM) –
Zen Internet, one of the UK’s leading Internet Service Providers (ISPs), in partnership with Computing has released a White Paper looking at how Next Generation Networks can solve the performance issues caused by the explosive growth in mobile working, collaborative multimedia applications and social networking.
As part of the White Paper, Computing conducted an independent survey of over 200 Senior IT strategists at UK organisations of all sizes, highlighting just how versatile the internet has become.
The White Paper identified a rapid growth in new business and multi-media applications and how these can benefit an organisation. However, at the same time these new services are also placing a huge strain on organisations networks and the Internet itself.
Multi-media applications were identified as a major growth area with 42% of respondents saying that audio and video conferencing over the internet are now regarded as essential business tools and a third of respondents said they were using or planning to use the internet to connect to applications in the cloud. Just over 54% of companies surveyed also stated that they were using VoIP for some, if not all of their telephony needs.
The Computing survey also showed that social networking services such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are now widely accepted by businesses and frequently form part of communication strategies despite the security and productivity risks. Two thirds of respondents stated that they allowed employees to use company computers and time to access their own personal email services and over half allowed access to social networking sites.
Fibre Optic Ethernet and broadband services have been developed to address this explosion in applications however simply increasing bandwidth is unlikely to do much more than ease the strains imposed on the network. As well as increased bandwidth, business critical and multimedia applications require intelligence built into the network and the Quality of Service features a Next Generation Network can deliver.
Almost three quarters (72%) of survey respondents reporting that they were using a wide variety of technologies to support remote workers however only a small proportion had begun to use the features of a Next Generation Network and had implemented Quality of Service (QoS) bandwidth reservation to prioritise business critical and delay sensitive multimedia traffic across their network.
‘From the smallest business to the largest corporation, companies are beginning to realise the benefits of Next Generation Networks and their ability to support their business critical and multimedia applications’ said Andrew Saunders, Head of product Management and Marketing.
‘Zen’s NGN based IP VPN solutions enable so much more than the convergence of voice, video and data into one easy to manage multi-service network. Our NGN solutions also provide our customers with the confidence to deploy new applications and cloud based solutions safe in the knowledge that their Wide Area Network will be specifically designed to support these types of services. Recognising the importance of this we are organising a series of seminars to discuss the associated benefits and opportunities made available to businesses through cloud based applications and NGNs.,’ added Andrew.
Zen has over 15 years industry experience and provides a range of Connectivity services including Broadband, Leased Lines, IP VPN. Zen’s full portfolio also includes Dedicated Servers, Managed Hosting and Colocation as well as Windows and Linux Web Hosting and Domain Names, Voice, Managed Firewalls, Online Data Backup and Web design.
To download a copy of the White Paper - ‘Next Generation Networks – Coping with application growth’ visit : http://www.zen.co.uk/business/leased-lines-and-ipvpn/ipvpn/connectivity-downloads.aspx
Any businesses wanting to find out more about Next Generation Networks and Cloud based solutions can attend Zen’s complementary event at the National Motorcycle Museum in the West Midlands on Tuesday 23rd November 2010. The event, Next Generation Networks – Enabling cloud based application will provide an overview of Zen’s Next Generation Network solutions and how these can help organisations meet the challenges faced by the explosion in application usage and the dramatic increase in cloud based solutions.
