Companies using managed network services are often better placed to take strategic business decisions in the networked economy than those managing their own environments.
That`s the view of Val Moodley, business development manager at IS` Quality of Service (QoS) Virtual Private Network, OmniLink.
"It`s dangerous to implement a Business-to-Business (B2B) or Business-to-Consumer (B2C) model without knowing whether the corporate WAN can handle the extra traffic or what upgrading is required.
"For B2B and B2C initiatives to succeed, businesses must have access to on-line statistics and in-depth reports relating to their networks` capacity and functionality. But not many of the larger in-house managed networks have these facilities. And no smaller organisation could afford to implement and management them," she says.
Because of the benefits of economies of scale, QoS VPNs are able to provide services such as Web-based analysis and reporting as a value-add to their core managed network services.
"The days when network management meant running HP OpenView on a single workstation are gone. Today network management is more complex, entailing multi-platforms, suppliers and vendors.
"As a result, companies of all sizes are turning to the QoS VPN which is no longer seen just as a network management resource. Rather, QoS VPNs are being positioned as a facility which can companies to make strategic business decisions based on a full picture of network resources," she explains.
Moodley believes that in addition to looking for managed network services, which go beyond purely monitoring the infrastructure, companies must ensure service providers can back up their offerings with Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
"SLAs should include aspects such as meantimes to repair, response and escalation, rather than the infrastructure issues and uptime guarantees normally associated with SLAs from QoS VPNs," she says. While demand for managed network services is growing rapidly - globally Forrester Research predicts a 30% annual growth for fully outsourced WAN Management rising to 35,7% by 2002 - there`s a similar demand for outsourced network infrastructure, according to Moodley.
"Companies see QoS VPN outsourcing as a viable solution for network reliability, scalability and manageability and for overcoming the need to invest continually in new technologies.
"However, Telkom`s restrictions on VPNs have stymied real growth in this field and I`m unsure if the market is confident that the situation is going to change by 2002, when a second telco is expected to come to market.
"There`s no way to predict whether two telcos will result in a free open telecommunications market. We could have a duopoly with the same level of market protection as is happening now," Moodley concludes.
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