It’s always been a hassle when a business loses broadband. But in the last few years, an increasing number of businesses have been telling me that they are practically immobilized when they lose broadband. The reason for this becomes obvious once businesses explain the degree to which they now rely on software in the cloud. A decade ago, big companies worked in the cloud, but big companies have started to move critical computing power back to the edge. It’s now small and medium businesses that have fully embraced cloud software as part of normal business operations.
If you define the cloud as working with data stored remotely, a few industries have worked in the cloud for a long time. For example, lawyers started using the online LexisNexis database in the 1970s. The first cloud service experienced by retail stores was online credit card validation. Over time, more and more functions have moved online,to the point that businesses have critical functions handled in the cloud.
A few examples of day-to-day functions that now require a broadband connection:
- Timekeeping and payroll systems.
- Automated point-of-sale devices that not only process credit cards but that interface with accounting records and inventory systems.
- Online sales portals for accepting sales orders.
- Restaurant and hotel reservations systems.
- Business software of all sorts like Microsoft Office 365, DropBox, collaborative software, video meeting software, emails, you name it. There is a surprisingly small amount of business software that is self-contained at a business these days,
- Industry-specific databases and portals for numerous industries like healthcare, real estate, hotels, stock trading.
- Data backup and online data storage.
- Security monitoring.
- Voice over IP phone systems.
- Banking and financial transactions.
- Shipping and customer fulfillment.
This reliance on broadband has made businesses become hyper-aware of broadband outages. In the many surveys and interviews we conduct, businesses say that being without broadband for even a few minutes brings them to a screeching halt.
Unfortunately, many businesses live on networks provided by unreliable ISPs. It’s not unusual to hear from businesses that have several all-day or half-day broadband outages every year and dozens of shorter duration. I’m hearing increasingly from businesses that reliability is their primary broadband issue, more even than price or speed.
Businesses don’t have a lot of options to fix the problem. Their choices are:
- Change to a more reliable ISP. Unfortunately, a majority of the businesses I talk to also say they don’t have competitive choices for their primary ISP.
- Use more software locally. That’s a nice thing to say in theory, but the small business options for operating without using cloud software is harder to do every year. But there are still some things that can be done. There is more expensive software that can be run locally. Companies can move telephones back to a landline (gasp!) that operate when the broadband network is down.
- The most realistic option is to find a second or even third broadband connection so that the business doesn’t lose all functionality. I’m finding that as many as 10% of the small businesses I talk to have gone to a two-ISP solution for redundancy. A company may only get the amount of bandwidth they need from the local cable company, but DSL, fixed wireless, or satellite as a backup is better than going totally dead. This is an expensive option, and a business has to do the math. What’s the real cost to the business for expected outages? If outages equate to significant lost sales or productivity, then a backup connection is probably justified.
This is mostly a non-issue caused by businesses making poor decisions and complaining about it as if it was someone else’s fault. I run an MSP (and ISP) and I frequently see consumer home routers in businesses that make these complaints. I make a good number of sales ‘doing it right’ however a decent percent of businesses reject the price tag of an absolutely affordable solution that would them online and instead of paying 300-400 per year for a backup solution they’ll lose X hours of productivity multiplied by Y of workers which is certainly more than the cost multiple times over in labor alone.
-The vast majority of the US has cellular data coverage.
-Essentially all business class routers from sonic walls to ubiquiti to fortinet etc have an LTE/5G failover solution for a couple hundred bucks. failover service plans are very cheap, $10-15/m, that provide fast failover and consistent connectivity.
-there are multiple solutions that are transparent to a corporate router like a peplink or cradlepoint in transparency mode that sits on the WAN side of the router and rapidly fails over to cellular without reconfiguration of a corporate supplied WAN device.
ISPs are building LESS resilient networks, building tree topologies without rings, using last mile techs that are tree topologies (*PON) instead of techs that have ring network models in the design (DSLAMs alls upport rings (old I know..), DOCSIS supports rings, and active fiber supports rings etc). One fiber cut takes out many times more customers, often enough it’s a trunk line and thousands are offline. A locked up router that requires vendor intervention takes out an entire trunk of these networks.
The fttx craze today is partially to blame, but the cost to change these network designs out for more resilient designs is pretty high and would likely derail most network builds.
Better choices by businesses to add inexpensive failover solutions are available and very affordable and can not only counter the reduction in reliability but make it better than if you were active fiber to prem on ring networks.