BIG Business idea.

[johandutoit2000]

I had an idea and I would like feedback on the possible problems that I cannot currently see.

Say you are a big company with branches in Stellenbosch, Durban, Midrand. You pay a provider like UUNET (Verison) a huge chunk of money every month for your WAN setup. This WAN setup gets abused by your employees for private mail and internet surfing. How do you solve this problem and keep everyone happy.

Possible salution:
You get the laptop special from Vodacom for each employee. http://www.vodacom.co.za/services/3g/datacard_specials.jsp

All company mail is then tranported via Vodacom's servers.
This will bring immediate relief for your leased lines.
Your IT Capex expenditure goes down. Each employee automatically upgrades to the latest laptop every 3 years.
Everyone is happy, because they get a laptop.
You make everyone pay for all data transferred more than 1G. This will force people to send and receive less private mails and surf less on the internet on company time and money.
You get instant mobility for all staff with easy VPN setup.
It opens up the WAN for other apps like VOIP. Big possible saving on Telkom bills.
Maby it is possible to negotiate with Vodacom to have emial adresses without vodamail in it. Rather like blabla@[company name].co.za. I dont know??

I guess you first need to know if this solution is viable from a financial point of view?
Would a 3G tower handle all the traffic? Say you have 50 employees per branch.

What do you people think.

 

[simple_simon]

hi big brother.

yes, people are cattle and should be treated that way...they should not conduct any personal business ever. they must be punished if they even think non business related thoughts while at work. you own them afterall.

this sort of management style is dying in the rest of the world...but its still alive and kicking in sa.

 

[johandutoit2000]

Strange then that I am not a manager and I think it is a great idea.

 

[stix]

You just want a laptop.

I would be against this kind of control.

 

[NeBo]

What if the employees hit their 1GB cap? They then use the internet at R1.20 per MB costing the company more. And if you cap them at 1GB, how are they supposed to do their work? Just my thoughts.

 

[johandutoit2000]

You cap at 1GB. The employee has to pay everything above that. Surely 1GB is enough for work releated mails. Obviously you still use normal company network for file transfers and so one. Everyone will be more consious about mail sizes.

 

[Syndyre]

If you're still paying for the existing company network and then another R848 * 50 per month per branch it doesn't really look like a good idea financially aside from anything else.

 

[johandutoit2000]

What about all the saving on IT Capex? I must admit I have no idea what the rental is for a typical leased line.

 

[Syndyre]

There obviously would be a saving but I'm guessing it'd probably be outweighed by the additional cost.

 

[ToxicBunny]

Well I for one like the idea from some aspects.. the laptop for each staff member is good... but I for one do plus minus 1.5GB of email every month... and in this kind of set up, even internal branch email has a cost attached to it. Then I also do upwards of I dunno, 800MB of web traffic everyday (ok granted I am an Infrastructure Manager for a web development company).... I am just trying to look at this from both sides of the debate, and I honestly don't really see it being much of a cost saver, at least not enough to justify the extra headaches that would be caused by having an extra layer of complexity in the system and another point of failure.