An Essential Guide to Future-Proofing Your Business Internet

Introduction

Most businesses have a fundamental understanding of how the Internet works. As a result, they tend to be less aware of how to connect to the internet and how to keep up with changes in internet connectivity.

Cloud computing has made it necessary for most businesses to have a robust, reliable, and quick connection.

Understanding Future-Proofing

Technology evolves so quickly these days, making it important to keep up to date with all of the changes. Just a couple of decades ago, internet connection was measured in kilobytes. Today, you wouldn’t be able to sustain business at that speed.

Future-proofing your business internet means establishing a consistent and reliable connection. This allows you to have a good connection to the internet and your business’s cloud network. This is why your connection needs to be both predictable and scalable.

The right approach provides several key benefits to your company:

• Adaptability, which is important for new technologies
• Improved customer support
• Improved security, which protects both your system and your data
• Reliability that boosts your company’s visibility and customer confidence in the business
• Scalability
• Streamlined integration of cloud and data services

When you future-proof your internet, you are taking care of a lot of other important technical areas of your business.

Assessing Your Current Internet Infrastructure

Before you can future-proof your business internet, you have to understand your current setup. Here’s what you need to do to evaluate your current

• Determine what your current bandwidth is. This requires that you test the internet speed.
• Review the test to see how much potential traffic your connection can handle.
• If you have trouble with your current connection, talk with your internet service provider (ISP) to determine what bandwidth would be better for your needs, particularly during peak data transfer hours.

Once you understand these aspects, you can start picking the right business internet for your needs.

There are a number of components that may be contributing to slower speeds and less reliable connectivity. These problems often cause bottlenecks that interrupt service.

The following are potential bottlenecks that could be slowing or limiting your current infrastructure:

• Outdated or lower-performance hardware
• Number of devices connecting to the network
• Number of people using the internet on a regular basis

If you have questions about your current setup, talk to your internet provider to get a better understanding of the speed and capability of your current services.

Upgrading to Scalable Internet Solutions

Once you understand the current performance of your setup, you can start looking to improve it. One of the most important considerations is scalability.

Ensuring that your internet is scalable allows you to easily change its capacity based on your current needs. As your business grows, you will want to increase how much bandwidth you have without having to make significant changes to your hardware or service.

Having a scalable solution allows your business to evolve and grow.

There are several solutions that provide scalable solutions:

• Business fibre optics
• Scalable bandwidth

Talk to your ISP to see what options they currently have available to future-proof your setup.

Integrating Advanced Technologies

There are a lot of buzzwords coming out of the tech industry that are affecting most businesses. Some that are almost certainly going to affect your business include the following:

• The Internet of Things, known as IoT
• Cloud computing
• Artificial intelligence, better known as AI

You may or may not be using one or more of these now, odds are you will be within the next five years. Each of these gives businesses a boost or an advantage. To keep from falling behind, you will probably need to adapt a couple of these, if not all of them.

The problem is that they all require considerable connectivity to run effectively.

Fortunately, you can plan for this by ensuring you have internet infrastructure that supports these technologies. This is part of ensuring a scalable solution.

There are several benefits of being an early adopter and integrating these solutions sooner rather than later.

• You will have access to the common problems, so you can resolve them faster, before most of your competitors.
• You will be more involved in the evolution of the technologies when you use the technology earlier in their development process.
• You are more likely to get discounts for the technology.

Ensuring High Reliability and Redundancy

To remain competitive, you need reliable connections so that your customers can seamlessly access your business. Downtime will negatively affect your business.

One of the best strategies for ensuring a reliable connection is to have redundancy. If one device or connection fails, the connection can switch to the other one. It’s worth having a backup to prevent service disruption.

You should have service level agreements (SLAs) with your ISPs, as well as other providers. SLAs detail what is included with the services your provider offers. This lets you manage your expectations.

Security Enhancements for Future Threats

One of the most important aspects of future-proofing your internet is the protection it offers from cyber threats. Since threats are constantly evolving, you want to be protected from the latest ones.

You have a lot of options when it comes to protecting your business, including the following measures:

• Firewall
• Encrypted connections
• Secure access points
• VPN

Having regular security audits on your security systems is essential to keeping your systems protected. Part of this is ensuring that systems are regularly updated. Patches and updates include protection against the latest threats.

Choosing the Right Service Providers

Finding the right ISP for future-proofing your services may actually mean changing your provider. The right provider can help you understand the different considerations, such as business fibre and enterprise ethernet. They can even help you understand static IP addresses compared to dynamic IP addresses so you can determine if you have the right one for your needs.

When looking for a good provider, use the following questions to assess each company you consider:

• What is the availability of their customer service? If you offer services all day, every day, you need a provider who has 24/7 customer service and technical support.
• What is the maintenance and downtime schedule? This will affect your operations, so you will need to coordinate with the regular maintenance of your connection.
• Is there a bandwidth cap? If so, the company probably isn’t going to be able to provide the services you need, especially if you have a high data exchange rate.
• Does the company require you to sign a contract? You will need to review the contract and ask questions about anything you don’t understand. If they offer a free trial first, this can help you determine if they offer services worth being committed through a contract.

In the end, you need to be able to trust your ISP. They will be responsible for keeping your business online, so if you aren’t able to trust them, you will need to find a new provider.

Your relationship should be forward-thinking, so you want an ISP who is knowledgeable about the latest technology. When new solutions are available, you want to be able to talk about those options and see if they could help benefit your business.

Continual Evaluation and Adaptation

Just like with security and maintenance, you are going to need to have a regular schedule for reviewing the process and your setup. This should be part of having a good relationship with your ISP. You can work with them to ensure you have regular evaluations to determine where you can improve your setup.

You need to ensure that there is a phase after the evaluation to incorporate and implement feedback. This is the best way to streamline the process and make the most of the assessment.

This needs to be worked into your regular business schedule. Security and connectivity are essential to keeping your business up and running. You will keep your customers happier by prioritising them and ensuring you stay ahead of the curve.

Final Thoughts

Future-proofing your business internet is essential for keeping your business online and proving to your customers that you are reliable. If you fall behind, you are more likely to lose customers and your positive reputation.

Taking a proactive approach and investing in your connection will ensure a higher-quality connection for your services.

Staying competitive today means staying current, or even a little ahead of the curve when it comes to technology. The marketplace is constantly digitally evolving, and you can have a distinct advantage by being more forward thinking- and more proactive.