In a little-publicized event last week, a good portion of AT&T’s DSL customers in the Great Lakes states lost DSL service for a full work day. I was one of them.
Robin Gareiss is executive vice president and senior founding partner for Nemertes Research, where she develops and manages research projects and cost models, conducts strategic seminars, and advises key clients. She currently serves as CFO, as well. Contact her.
Don’t worry. This isn’t going to be a rant about network reliability or carrier customer service. Rather, we have to find the silver linings in any trouble-time, right?
Like most people, I was concerned about responding to e-mails in a timely manner (which is about 2 minutes these days). So I assessed my options: Wait until the service was repaired (the repair status kept changing); go to Starbucks and enjoy a caffeine and pastry-filled work day; or try to use (hijack) a nearby wireless link that used a difference service.
Although Option 2 was tempting, none of the options thrilled me. And then I remembered: I have a BlackBerry.
For e-mail purposes, that’s really all I needed to survive the outage and still be responsive to clients and colleagues. And that got me thinking about business continuity in the small branch of home office.
Unlike headquarters or large regional facilities, redundant access lines from multiple providers simply isn’t standard practice at small and home offices. Moving forward, I expect that some companies will, in fact, buy both DSL and cable modem service for offices that house key employees - and why not? For a relatively affordable price, redundant broadband lines would provide a high level of reliability.
But for less than the cost of that extra broadband line, why not consider a wireless-enabled PDA service? For about $45 a month (with taxes), I receive unlimited e-mail and Web access regardless of where I’m located. And for about $70, you can add a portable keyboard, resolving the slowed employee productivity that results from PDAs’ tiny keypads.
Browse Newsletter categories: Branch Office Best Practices | Convergence | High Speed LANs | Identity Management | IT Careers and Training | IT Leadership | Linux | Messaging | Network Optimization | Network/Systems Management | New Data Center Strategies | Novell NetWare Tips | Optical Networking | Outsourcing | Security Strategies | Servers | Service Provider News Report | Small Business Technology | Storage in the Enterprise | Technology Executive | View from The Edge | Virus and Bug Patch Alert | VORTEX Digest | VPNs | Web Applications | Wide Area Networking | Windows Networking Strategies | Wireless in the Enterprise |
|
Does Verizon's Voyager stack up to the iPhone? |
5 IT skills that won't boost your salary 
[1,407]
Women 4 times more likely than men to cough up personal info [589]
Japan's 10 funniest tech-related commercials [Videos] [407]
Throwing away a promo CD is "unauthorized distribution"? [1,265]
Adults too quick to dismiss educational video games [682]
Attack of the iPhone clones [Slideshow] [578]
10 things IT needs to know about AJAX [1,258]
This Year's 25 Geekiest 25th Anniversaries [Slideshow] [409]
Emerson Network Power and its Liebert power and cooling technologies increase IT system flexibility and availability, while lowering the total cost of ownership.
Learn how to optimize power and cooling in network access rooms to keep equipment operating at peak performance and proactively monitor changes.
Read about Sequent and how they implemented a new data center to meet current requirements while easily scaling to support projected growth.
Reduce cooling system energy costs by 30 to 45 percent through five data center efficiency strategies.
