Cabling Investment Overview
Network cabling seems to be the last thing on most peoples mind when developing or investing in a new IT infrastructure. This is possibly due to the cabling not being very tangible or even attractive to people. However the network is very important as it supports your IT and telephony infrastructure and will be there longer than your software and IT equipment. For this reason alone the network infrastructure should be planned carefully so you get the maximum usage and productivity out of it over the following years.
Some tests have been conducted by one of the largest cabling manufacturers on two different networks installed in different ways. The facts were stunning as one network performed to 85% which is very high and the other performed at only 4% of its capabilities. If these networks were installed within two similar businesses, as you can imagine one of the businesses will have a massive competitive advantage over the other.
Your network could be the main reason or frustration why your IT is not delivering. Gone are the days where the cabling can be thrown in, especially with the new Cat 6, Cat 6a and Cat 7 networks.
Let's take that a little further and look at the actual figures...
The budget for the cabling can be as small as 10% of the overall IT budget, but will give you around 3 to 5 times more life than the software before it requires changing.
You only have one opportunity to get this right first time.