Speed merchants
CORPORATE SOUTH AFRICA is set to be the biggest beneficiary of the current rapid rollout of new telecommunications infrastructure. From having to optimise every part of their infrastructure to use as little bandwidth as possible, companies may soon face a situation where they have more capacity than they really know what to do with.
Until now, larger companies in SA have been stymied by bandwidth considerations. Linking sites throughout SA has been challenging, with the need for high-speed network connections balanced against the relatively high cost of those connections.
That was exacerbated over the past few years as the amount of rich content on the Internet exploded, causing systems administrators to lock down their networks, banning access to sites such as Facebook and YouTube purely because they cause congestion on the links between the different sites and core network.
Stefano Mattiello, executive head of Neotel’s enterprise group, says companies are by and large still stuck in the mindset of looking for replacements for what they currently use rather than looking at how more bandwidth might allow them to operate more efficiently.
He gives the example of a company with a manufacturing site connected via a 256Kbps link to its head office that, when told Neotel didn’t offer anything smaller than 2Mbps, insisted that 256Kbps was all they needed – even though the cost was the same.
Mattiello says companies are now trying to make a direct comparison between Telkom and Neotel but warns that’s not a realistic comparison, as Neotel is trying not to be just another Telkom. He adds there’s much nervousness in corporate IT departments to push the boundaries, especially when all they previously had access to was Telkom.
However, there are real opportunities for companies to take advantage of greater bandwidth. Says Mattiello: “Large financial institutions have typically maintained a live site and a backup site, with updates being fed via a trickle feed from the live systems to the back-up site.
That was done because it was just too expensive to run the kind of capacity between the two sites to keep them in lockstep with each other. It will now be possible to use both sites as live systems, enabling them to perform better while still providing back-up for each other.”
Verizon Business SA business development executive Elia Tsouros says greater bandwidth certainly creates opportunities.
“Many companies will look to use increased bandwidth to get better services while containing costs. With the economic situation slowing down globally, companies will be looking to find innovative ways to better use the resources they have. However, business isn’t going to slow in terms of looking for new ways to use technology and due to that cost containment will be vital.”
Tsouros says Verizon is already experiencing companies starting to move more services to hosted environments, allowing the major service providers to run systems on their behalf instead of keeping the systems physically located in their own buildings.
Multinationals are moving services – such as development and even some call centre functions – to India to take advantage of its lower cost base. “That’s happening even before the new submarine cables that will run down the East coast of Africa come online,” says Tsouros. “Once they become operational that trend will accelerate.”
While most of the initial take-up for greater bandwidth will essentially be companies shoring up systems and processes that have been run on a shoestring budget for many years, there are a number of services that could benefit from massively increased bandwidth, two being the high-end video conferencing systems offered by HP, in the form of its Halo service, and Cisco, with its Tele-presence offering.
Both take the concept of video conferencing to the next level, with dedicated systems giving the appearance that you really are sitting across the table from someone rather than watching him on a screen. That’s achieved by streaming high-definition video across high bandwidth links with little delay, giving a quality of service far beyond the jerky video SA users are used to. The benefit is that it can dramatically cut the amount of both local and international travel, saving companies both time and money.
New telecoms infrastructure – give your views
Finweek
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