Wire Your SMB for Digital Success

IT talent is scarce and expensive, so it’s no surprise that many small- and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) operate with limited IT support. For many, this makes them reticent to upgrade their network and deploy more robust solutions with better performance and flexibility. After all, upgrading a network has historically required a large IT time investment and substantial planned downtime.

Thankfully, modern network solutions are far easier to deploy and manage than their predecessors, enabling even organizations with minimal IT resources to take full advantage of their network capabilities.

There are many advantages to upgrading to a modern network. For starters, employees, partners, and customers have come to expect immediate gratification from the apps and services they use in their day-to-day lives.

Cloud software such as Office 365, for example, uses an Internet connection to sync working files and backups. If the network is slow, loading times for documents, emails, tasks, and calendar items will be noticeably delayed, reducing task turnaround time. Even short delays can compound over the course of a workday to significantly affect user productivity.

A fast, responsive network can meet employees’ expectations for responsiveness and ensure no one is left waiting for the system to catch up. Now more than ever, the network is directly connected to employee productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness.

Speed, however, isn’t the only benefit. As a business grows, it needs an easily expandable network to ensure that IT systems can keep pace. If scaling the network and adding additional capacity is a slow and complicated project, then rapid growth will likely overextend the network’s capabilities, acting as an artificial constraint to business expansion.

Finally, the network must be secure, and strong network security is now available for SMBs without the complexity. Consumer and legacy business networking equipment is not nearly secure enough to protect SMBs’ digital assets from malevolent cyber actors. It’s well worth upgrading to a modern network to obtain a sufficient level of protection, especially since today’s technology is far simpler to configure and deploy.

The end result? Powerful capabilities without complexity, providing more uptime, robust collaboration, and broader employee mobility. Companies can confidently deliver faster, more reliable customer experiences. They can secure data in the cloud and enable virtual collaboration, no matter how small their IT teams may be.

Aruba’s switching solutions support cloud, mobile, and connected devices like security cameras and sensors with a design that’s simple to deploy and manage. Deployment is largely automated, requiring very little in the way of hands-on IT, and the process minimizes disruption to the production environment. Ongoing management is simple, thanks to intuitive, web-based dashboards. Zero touch provisioning makes it simple to scale.

Mid-sized organizations don’t need to settle for sub-par network speed, scalability, and security. Even companies with generalist or lean IT teams can confidently deploy and manage an upgraded, modern network to support a modern, growing business.

For more information on Aruba’s switching solutions, visit here.