TechCon Services

All across the globe businesses small, medium and large are all becoming more and more reliant on their IP networks for survival. This coupled with the growing trend for the convergence of the voice, data, and video over a single IP network make an organization’s network infrastructure one of the most critical elements in its overall operation. No longer can organizations afford not to include a thorough and comprehensive plan for their continued availability as part of their business continuity and disaster recovery planning efforts.

Company networks now must provide voice, video, and data services that are increasingly integrated with applications. So if the company network fails all forms of communication with customers, suppliers and employees can also fail dramatically. Worse yet access to critical information can be lost or potentially compromised. Yet with these calamitous results real possibilities for companies, I find it surprising that many organizations continue to be inadequately prepared to deal with adverse events relating to their business and network operations.

It should be clear to all that are responsible for IT within corporations and government agencies that the network and the network infrastructure (comprised of DNS, DHCP, and etc.) are getting more complex and thus harder to manage, yet are a most important part of their organization’s overall operational success. Networks provide voice, video, and data services that are increasingly integrated with business critical applications. Applications such as e-mail, CRM, and ERM rely on the network for proper operation. As such the network should be considered of great importance in any business continuity and/or disaster recovery plan.

It should be understood that any disaster recovery planning effort should address all of the elements of an organization’s network. Most corporate and government networks are comprised of three main elements – LAN, WAN, and network infrastructure services. The LAN provides for interconnectivity around a single organizational location or locale, the WAN provides interconnectivity between these locations (interconnecting geographically specific sites) other business partners and access to public networks such as the public switched telephone network in the case of voice traffic and the Internet for data traffic. The network infrastructure services element provides the services that allow control of the network and flow of data such as DNS, DHCP, WINS, FTP, and contain access to the network in the case of Active Directory, RADIUS, and TACACS.