Unless you’re an ‘IT person’ – the idea of talking about business level IT networks might seem a bit intimidating. In reality though, you probably already work with a network, even if it’s just a small one.

IT networks aren’t as complex as they sound, however there may still be some of you who might struggle to understand it, let alone implement one.

Here, we’ll explore what a business IT network, ask when a network becomes essential for a small business – and some questions you can pose for your business that’ll help you decide if an IT network is right for your company.

An IT network

In the simplest terms, an IT network is just your business IT devices connected together.

Now, in reality, there’s a lot more going on under the hood – which means a lot that could potentially go wrong! This is why businesses often get IT services so they know that their whole network and system are managed by qualified professionals that will be able to fix any issues in a timely manner. If you’re wanting to learn more about wheat’s under the hood of your network then starting with definition is a good place to work from. Connecting all of the devices in your network would be considered a LAN (local area network) – and, when you connect to other devices that are in another geographical location, your network becomes a WAN (wide area network). Connections between different geographical locations are generally done with leased telecoms lines.

There are a variety of ways to connect the devices on your network – but generally, they’ll communicate with one-another either through wireless connections – or wired ethernet connections. When your data hits telecommunication circuits, it’ll generally be travelling along bonded copper lines – or fibre optic cables.

Of course, things would get incredibly messy and hard to handle if each device was just directly connected to another – so there are a variety of components that will be involved in the network too – including hubs, switches, bridges, routers, gateway, and more – but, unless you really want to start understanding how the hardware works, these can quite easily be left to the IT professionals to make your business technology run as efficiently as possible.

What does a network offer?

When your devices are connected, you’ll start to see a world of benefits. Including:

Shared storage

Having your storage centralised, rather than sitting on local devices, means two things – centralized control of what you hold (essential in these times of heightened data protection laws) and shared access for the people who need it.

Interestingly, centralizing your storage actually improves data safety – since the majority of breaches are as a result of human error. When you remove most of the human-element from storage, you’re automatically improving safety.

Off-site access

Have you got people who work for you but have a role that takes them out on the road? Or on to client sites? Would having people able to access your business applications and data even when they’re on out of the office be useful?

A business network can be configured so end-users can remotely join from virtually anywhere they can get an internet connection – and, when they’re connected, access everything they’d be able to access if they were at their desk.

Central application access

Like most businesses, it’s highly likely that you’ll have mission critical applications that underpin what you do on a daily basis.

Not only can you centralize these applications with a network – meaning everyone works with the latest version and in a way that encourages collaboration – but you can also prioritise the data that flows between your users and the most important tools your business uses. Also, take advantage of application dependency mapping tools to understand the hidden connections within and across your applications and databases.

Shared accessories

Even if you’ve only got a simple network in your business, connection your devices means that everyone’s got access to the office peripherals that are useful – including printers, scanners, copiers, etc.

Security controls

The latest European data protection laws have significantly increased the emphasis on only the necessary people being able to access sensitive information in the workplace – and this very much includes digitally.

With data protection ramping up around the world, it’s useful to know that a network allows you to limit access to certain users – so, if you’ve got data that’s held on a ‘need to know’ basis, you can control the audiences that have access.

Decentralized management

Often, the management of a network falls to a Managed Network Provider (MSP). Having someone off-site working on your systems traditionally meant that getting ‘hands on’ with a network was difficult – but that’s changing all the time.

Now, with more and more IT networks using SD WAN as a control system that remotely unifies management of your network, it’s much easier for an MSP to keep on top of everything that’s occurring.

Do you need a network?

There are no hard and fast rules as to whether you need a network to manage or grow your business – there are good size companies that handle data locally and don’t require a connection – and, equally, there are very small companies who simply could not exist without complex networks powering what they do.

The simple way of assessing whether you need a network is to look over the benefits we’ve listed and ask yourself if any of them seem like they would be a benefit. If the answer’s yes, then exploring how you could make them happen in your business is likely to be worth doing.

Some questions to pose:

• How effectively do we collaborate on projects?
• Would it be useful for our team to have network access working remotely?
• Does working locally meet new stringent data protection laws?

There are more things to consider than just these questions – but at the most basic level, access, control and security are the fundamentals that companies often look for first.

How much does a network cost?

While there are plenty of attractive benefits that go hand-in-hand with creating a business network – there’s always been one predictable downside; cost.

There’s no getting around it – networking costs money – and the bigger and more complex your requirements are, the more costly it’s going to be. That said, recent enormous jumps forward in cloud-computing are leading to large tech companies offering a huge amount of their networking infrastructure ‘as a service’ – that’s to say, on a subscription basis where you only pay for what you need or use.

If you’re certain that you need to grow your IT network to keep up with competition, then doing so in a way that has a predictable, monthly cost attached is often far better than jumping in at the financial deep-end and taking the hit that would be involved with buying your infrastructure outright on day one…