By Charles L. Nault

Every two minutes two million e-mails are sent, 1,157 YouTube videos are viewed, 11,000 songs are downloaded, and 2 new blog sites are created. Those are just a few of the activities going on via the Internet. E-mail has evolved to become a mission-critical application as essential as electricity or telephone service. In fact, according to a META Group survey, 80 percent of corporate e-mail users believe that e-mail is far more valuable than the telephone for business communications. Today, 90 percent of corporate communication is driven by e-mail.

In the 20+ years that I have been working on the implementation of technology in other people’s businesses I have seen just about every level of implementation and network design and configuration that you can imagine. I’ve worked on networks for major carriers, foreign governments, Fortune 500 companies, and 10-person firms.

Organizations from multi-billion dollar corporations to the community church rely entirely on their e-mail, web access, and computer applications every moment of the working day. Any company that is going to compete and thrive in this world is going to do so through the effective use of technology. The optimal word is effective.

When they cannot effectively use the computer, I’ve observed that most employees chat with other employees and accomplish little or nothing. As a small business owner, when I see idle people in a business I can’t help but think about the cost of all that idleness. In the ultra-competitive business world, the ability to leverage every hour of every worker’s time for maximum productivity is essential to the very survival of an organization. Business managers and owners go to great lengths to leverage employee’s time. There are startling statistics that show that the technology in most of these companies doesn’t work a frightening percentage of the time.

Just how effective is IT in business? The only word that comes to mind is dismal. The facts speak for themselves. 78 percent of companies rate their IT as ineffective. Over 25 percent of IT projects are completed late. Studies from KPMG estimate that less than 40 percent of implemented projects, when measured one year later, showed any of their estimated business value whether delivered on time or not. Businesses view e-mail as a mission-critical application but they're putting up with, on average, 1.6 downtime periods a month. 75 percent of businesses experienced an e-mail outage in 2005 with 72 percent of outages lasting for 4 hours or more. Poor system performance is number one on the top-five list of technology problems small businesses face, according to July 2007 information from support.com. IT is just not effective. And downtime, as we’ll see in much greater detail, is a constant issue.

There is an even more significant problem with your network that has to do with daily performance. Total IT downtime costs companies an average of 3.6 percent of Gross Revenues according to Infonetics, one of the most respected IT research firms. Statistics show that this year you will bleed money while your workers sit idle because your network is not functioning correctly, or is not functioning at all. It will have nothing to do with any outside force attacking you. I can guarantee that it will happen to you. Non-malicious downtime is going to cost you money this year. The question is simply, how frequent and how bad will your network outages will be?

So how do you get it right?

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