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WORKING TOGETHER
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TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
While natural disasters seem to be rarely out of the news these days, organisations remain unlikely to get any latitude from their customers if some kind of catastrophe affects the services they are paying for. With modern consumers and businesses having an almost total dependence on high-tech forms of communication, providers face greater potential fallout than most from unexpected catastrophes.
Ensuring continuity of business and of services is something BT Wholesale is keenly aware of for this reason, and the concept of resilience is intrinsic to all current and future network developments, such as the IP-based core network currently being built as part of 21CN. However, few organisations have the scale and expertise that BT Wholesale can call on when they are trying to build in the appropriate level of resilience, but that does not mean they cannot get help to do it right.
Paul Beacham, Head of Market Development – Data Connectivity, BT Wholesale, says: "It has become an increasingly important area of focus for Communications Providers over the past few years for a number of reasons. The market demand for higher bandwidth connections has increased the amount of data transported, and therefore that can be lost. Organisations are also sharing more critical data, more frequently and – in a lot of cases – in real time, which makes downtime and loss of integrity even more damaging. In addition, in this age of convergence, different types of critical data and applications are being run over network connections, again increasing the potential impact from any loss."
PEACE OF MIND
BT Wholesale’s coverage reach, size of network and in-built network resilience mean all BT telecommunications products and services already provide a certain level of peace of mind, should the worst happen. In fact, it is access points to core networks that are the most likely to suffer from downtime and damage to data integrity, according to Paul Beacham, something BT Wholesale can address as part of its business continuity portfolio of services.
The floods over the so-called British summer were a painful wake up call to many businesses, a number of which have now approached BT to see what it can offer to remove or reduce the potential impact in future similar situations, which the climatologists believe are increasingly likely to occur.
For those Communications Providers looking for greater certainty in their business lives, particularly where a single point of failure could be disastrous, such as point-to-point high bandwidth connections or ‘hub’ links into their own networks, there is a range of services available from BT Wholesale designed to increase network resilience. These range from end-to-end multi-diversity options, to those that remove the risk of single point of failure by providing completely diverse routes for network traffic, to disaster recovery type services such as ‘office in a van’ and dark sites.
However, Paul’s view is that a much more holistic approach can bring greater benefits to those Communications Providers that work with BT.
UNDERSTANDING OUR CUSTOMERS
He explains: "We are not just selling a product. We want to understand what our customers are trying to do and help them to understand where the risks potentially are within their business and their network. This could include bringing in business continuity experts from around BT to provide consultancy and carry out risk assessments. Then we can work with our customers to see how our products and capabilities can be best used to address their requirements."
With consumer and business tolerance of service interruptions and failure being inelastic when it comes to service provider calamities – no matter how unexpected or undeserved, it is clear that the network resilience and business continuity services offered by BT Wholesale are the insurance policy that no one should go without when the scale of the potential loss is so great. 
TAKING STEPS
If you want to talk to BT Wholesale about network resilience, disaster recovery and BTs range of connectivity services then contact your BT Wholesale account manager to discuss further.
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BETWEEN THE LINES PDF
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