Network performance at risk as bandwidth demand outpaces capacity across UK businesses

Demand for bandwidth on computer networks is rapidly outstripping capacity in over one third of UK businesses, leading to major concerns over application delivery, security and business continuity, according to new research from Brocade.

A recent study of over 100 senior UK IT decision makers found that 39 percent felt that they would need to increase network capacity by up to 50 percent over the next year just to keep pace with user demand. The underlying capacity concern is over network and application performance, with 39 percent of those questioned stating that it (performance) was of paramount importance to the success of the business. Enforcing this, two thirds of respondents stated that their existing network could only be described at best as ‘relatively quick’, and a further 18 percent describing it as ‘slow’ showing that work still needs to be done to maintain the status quo.

Paul Phillips, Regional Director - UK & Ireland, Brocade, stated: “CIOs expect tomorrow's corporate networks to fulfil a wide range of sometimes-conflicting demands. They want unprecedented scalability, but reduced management complexity. They want seamless mobility, but tight orchestration, and they want emerging networking technologies to complement the investments they are making today, instead of forcing them to refresh the entire environment in a wholesale 'rip-and-replace' exercise.

“This research has highlighted what many in the industry had suspected; network performance, scalability, availability and security is uppermost in the minds of network managers, struggling to meet end user expectations of an ‘always-on, always-available’ network,” he added.

Key findings include:

Over the next year, 15 percent of businesses are predicting they will need to increase network capacity by 20-30 percent; 13 percent expect to have to increase capacity by 30-40 percent and a further 11 percent by anywhere between 40-50 percent Network availability is the greatest concern of 18 percent of the sample, consolidation was cited by 39 percent and security by 15 percent.

Source: Spreckley Partners