Some 82 percent of enterprise network decision makers surveyed in an Avaya research study will specify Category 6 high-performance cabling in their next installation. Ratified in June 2002 and September 2002 respectively, the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) and ISO/IEC Category 6/Class E cabling standards establish a benchmark for network performance in Local Area Networks (LANs).
The Avaya Systimax Structured Connectivity Solutions (SCS) research report surveyed more than 2,000 organizations in 38 countries. The report also found that 28 percent, of the complete sample, have already installed high-performance Category 6 cabling.
An analysis of the Middle East indicates that IT Managers in the Middle East are as equally forward thinking as their information technology (IT) colleagues around the globe, indeed if not more, with 96 percent planning to specify Category 6 cabling; moreover, some 37 percent had already installed high-performance category 6 cabling.
The research report, from Avaya, revealed that network downtime, together with moves, adds and changes, is costing businesses millions of dollars in lost productivity. From research data, it is estimated, for example, that downtime is costing companies with more than 7,500 network users an average $5.5 million annually in lost employee productivity alone.
The significance of these losses is widely recognized by respondents. Network downtime was cited as the issue of greatest concern more often than any other. Unprompted, 26 percent of respondents said downtime was the most likely network issue to keep them awake at night and a further 15 percent said degraded network performance was their biggest worry.
Network downtime experienced by users of Category 6 cabling was less than among users of Category 5 and 5e solutions. Among the global sample, only eight percent of Category 6 users experience more than five hours a month downtime compared with 11 percent among users of Category 5 and 5e.
IT professionals were invited to participate in the survey via an Internet Web portal during August and September 2002 using a questionnaire designed for clarity and simplicity. Its 22 questions were available in 12 languages, enabling network and IT managers to respond in the language they preferred.
The 2,047 IT professionals who took part in the research were from a representative sample of Systimax SCS and non-Systimax SCS customers in 38 countries worldwide. They spanned organizations with between 50 and 10,000 network users across all industry sectors. — (menareport.com)
© 2002 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
