Fiber optics aren’t new. First developed in the 1970s, they’ve been known for high-speed data transfer for decades. But many CEOs are used to thinking of their business application as limited; aside from a few specific markets, like stock trading or telecommunications, does data speed really have a significant impact?
As the economy becomes ever more digitally supported, the answer has swung to a resounding “Yes!” Fiber optic networks offer benefits to businesses of all sizes, including the following:
- Increased employee productivity. Downloading reports, sending files across departments, accessing shared documents, and other business tasks are just one component of the fiber optic benefit. Employees also feel more engaged and can support a faster working pace when the systems they use are more responsive. In the digital age, that often comes down to network connectivity.
- Improved VoIP support. Voice over IP is a technology that underpins a number of modern communications technologies, including Google Talk and Skype. VoIP offers numerous benefits over traditional phone services, including lower costs and increased flexibility, especially in BYOD environments or environments with a number of remote workers. And the speed and bandwidth of fiber optic networks puts professional-quality VoIP services within reach for many businesses.
- Better disaster recovery prep. It’s all well and good to have a disaster recovery strategy in place, but if a disaster does strike, backing up the company’s data will have been only half the battle. The speed with which a business can recover from a disaster is limited by the speed at which data can transfer from offsite data storage to production servers. Fiber networks can speed this transfer, reducing downtime in critical moments.
- Better cloud access. With Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), and numerous other business applications as services flourishing on the cloud, businesses can take advantage of high-quality, well-managed resources with lower overhead costs than in-house management and support. But accessing the cloud requires data transfer, and a slow network can hamper business processes that touch the cloud. High-speed fiber optics alleviate this considerably.
- Increased flexibility. Site traffic isn’t a constant, especially for businesses whose demand fluctuates seasonally, or businesses that are launching large sales or promotions. Fiber networks offer increased ability to scale bandwidth without costly additional installations.
Fast data networks are no longer just an impressive technical toy, or an investment that benefits the IT department while leaving other departments unaffected. Instead, they can dramatically increase the overall functioning of a business.