Companies are not meeting the needs of current network users who are keen on viewing Web 2.0 content, says Dimension Data. This has resulted in slower networks that cause frustration and the loss of up to three days of productivity per employee, per year.
"The needs of today's dynamic network users are putting strain on companies' networks," says Dimension Data UK business development manager Gary Middleton. "Users want to view videos and other new applications and there is a certain level of frustration when they can't access that content."
Middleton says this issue was uncovered by a survey conducted by Dimension Data involving 957 IT users and 267 IT decision-makers (ITDMs) responsible for managing IT networks across Europe, Australia, the Americas, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
A statement from Dimension Data says IT users are losing, on average, 35 minutes per month on network log-in delay, 25 minutes on e-mail, and 23 minutes on file transfers. Lower time delays were reported in technologies like VOIP and video, but these applications have such a low tolerance for delays that any time lapse might render them unusable, it notes.
"If an employee is unable to use a certain application or technology, they might avoid using it altogether. This means that not only is the original investment negated, but the user is unable to enjoy any productivity benefit that the technology was supposed to give," says Jeff Jack, GM of network integration at Dimension Data SA.
Earlier this year, Duncan van Jaarsveld, networking business unit manager at Datacentrix, attributed the slowness of company networks to the exponential growth in data and its crumbling effect on networks.
"As we all know, data, video and VOIP are growing exponentially. Because of the massive growth in data, businesses are experiencing slow application performance and losing productivity on unmanaged WAN infrastructures," he commented.
"IT frustrations have been around since the invention of the computer, and networks have often been the culprit in these frustrations," says BMI-TechKnowledge analyst Ryan Smit.
Smit emphasises the loss in productivity as a catalyst for companies to upgrade their networks. "What the report appears to suggest is that ITDMs aren't fully aware of how data-intensive new applications are, and that the network upgrades are only likely to happen after a period of increasing frustration, rather than ITDMs pre-empting the productivity losses and acting proactively to avoid them."
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