* With a slough of branch-in-a-box products available, what are the true benefits?
As I wrote last week, leading enterprise IT executives are signaling their interest in using a single physical device that provides multiple functions at the branch office. According to Nemertes’ Building the Successful Virtual Workplace benchmark, 31% of participants are evaluating all-in-one devices, and 17% already are using them.
There are several benefits to these devices. Many organizations focus on the cost benefits. For a new location, all-in-one devices make perfect sense. The cost, typically between $2,000 and $12,000, depending on size, is lower than the collective cost of buying each of the functions (voice/data switching, routing, firewall, antivirus, intrusion detection/prevention, Web filtering, wide-area file services, wireless LAN, and applications) in a separate box.
Enterprises save costs in capital purchase, installation, ongoing management and maintenance, downtime, troubleshooting, security breaches, and WAN bandwidth.
* Initial capital purchase. If it’s a greenfield site, the initial capital costs of an all-in-one box will be less than buying each function separately. With an existing site, the initial capital cost will be an extra cost, unless it’s time to replace some of the gear.
* Installation. We’ve found that implementing an all-in-one box typically takes six hours, including programming and testing. Stand-alone products typically take four hours each. So, once you hit two boxes, you’ve typically gotten payback on the installation time. With an existing site, those six hours are an extra cost. At $40 an hour, the installation would cost $240, compared with $160 for a single standalone product. Multiply that standalone product by five (the low-end of the average number of networking/security devices at the branch), and the total climbs to $1,120 per location.
* Ongoing management/maintenance. The amount of time spent on management/maintenance on a single box typically is lower than on several individual products because a single vendor is responsible for providing the updates, rather than staff having to coordinate efforts with multiple vendors. Savings here can make up for the extra capital and installation costs of an existing site over time.
* Downtime/troubleshooting. One box with one set of connections, rather than multiple boxes with multiple connections, lessens the chance of a physical circuit/line problem. In some cases, these products separate the management plane from the delivery architecture, so if there is an outage, a central IT staff member can still access the device-management interface to troubleshoot and repair the problem. Meanwhile, if one function of the box is down, the rest shouldn’t be affected.
* Fallout from security breach. Many branch offices lack necessary security features because organizations can’t afford to buy, install and manage the various products at multiple branch offices. All-in-one boxes make it more affordable to get the functions into the organization to avoid the productivity loss and potential liability costs of a breach.
* Bandwidth savings. Confine peer-to-peer traffic to branch offices, and bandwidth requirements will drop.
The movement toward all-in-one devices is happening already. This won’t be an overnight change, though. These devices will enter organizations primarily when they open new offices. Secondarily, they will arrive when an existing branch requires an upgrade of more than one type of networking device at a time.
The vast majority of vendors are planning for this shift. It’s imperative to ask vendors about their plans to integrate various networking functions moving forward. More on this next week.
