SICOM Ltd
PO Box 206
Knaresborough
HG5 5DG
T: 07803 737321
E: sales@sicom.uk
It's Just Internet Access
Isn't It?
The SICOM guide to buying the right Business Internet service for your company.
Internet Access is now ubiquitous. Free WifI, Mobile connectivity, Home Broadband, Office Connections. It’s all the same, isn’t it?
Business Internet Access is seen as a commodity and it’s often bought on budget – what can I get for
£100/month, £400/month, £1,000/month?
Bandwidth is seen as the only measure – 100Mb, 1Gb, 10Gb and even 100Gb.
Quality is hard to define. Is it bandwidth? Ease of use? No “whizzy wheel” waiting? Ability to use Teams/Zoom with ease? Or is it “always on”?
Rather than try and guess all these things, we’ll take you through what a business internet connection should have and what you might need, to help you choose your supplier against the criteria you have selected.
Let’s start with the basics – why do businesses need to connect to the internet? Or perhaps more relevant, what applications do they use that require the internet?
01
Internet Access
being able to view
websites, gather information.
02
Of course
03
Teams, Zoom, etc.
This is now one of the most used and most important applications. It demands consistent bandwidth and latency to work with video.
04
Accessing Cloud Based Software
most companies now use accounting systems, CRM, and technical software that is cloud-based.
05
Telephony
yes, some people still pick up a desk phone and make calls and call centres of course can have hundreds of people taking and making calls.
06
Backup and Storage
You can hold all your company’s files on a server in the office, but that’s a pretty risky strategy, so everyone backs up their data in the cloud or in another location that is connected via the Internet.
07
SD WAN
You may have a Software Defined Wide Area Network connecting multiple offices. This enables you to connect using a local ISP. But the choice of ISP is even more important.
08
Direct Connection to a Data Centre
You may have decided to move all your IT equipment out of your office and locate it in a data centre. This could be nearby or anywhere in the UK. This is generally a good idea, because the IT equipment is secure, supplied with resilient power and available 24/7.
09
Direct Connection to a Cloud Service
You may have decided that having your own IT equipment in the data centre is not for you and you’ve moved to the Cloud in part or entirely.
10
IP Addresses
You’ll normally get a fixed IP address with your service. IPv4 is the original addressing scheme that has now run out of new allocations, but some ISPs will have access to a pool of IPv4s that they can supply if you need more.
There’s a lot of detail behind the words “It’s just Internet”. If your use of the internet is very simple, you don’t need to worry too much. Find an ISP that provides service in your area and place your order. However, if you are reliant on the internet to work – and most businesses are – you need to choose more carefully.
Think about:
What connectivity will I need in the future? Direct links to the Cloud, Data Centres, Voice services? Can my ISP deliver that if I need it?
Do they know how to connect you directly to AWS/Azure/Google? How much bandwidth do I actually need?
Is the cheap option actually congested and offers poor support?
How good will the ISP be at supporting me if there are problems?
How resilient is the service to my building? Separate routes? Separate nodes/PoPs?
How resilient is the ISP? Multiple core nodes? Multiple upstream connections?
To read the full article, download the file below:
Confused or Enlightened?
Hopefully, you are now enlightened and can think carefully about your needs and create a specification to present to your potential ISPs. Then you can sit back and judge their responses. However, you may not be technical and you won’t feel confident in things like assessing your current bandwidth usage, whether you will need low latency/high throughput links to Cloud Service Providers, or how to judge if your ISP’s proposal is truly diverse and resilient. If this is the case, we can hold your hand through the process and help you write a specification by simply filling in and sending your details below.