SMB Data Volume Driving Bandwidth Sales

By Mike Tighe

The results of a recent LinkedIn survey show that the amount of volume and information being collected by SMBs will grow significantly over the next two years. 

The results, from more than, 1,300 respondents, reflect the evolution from the Mom and Pop” small business that does not use technology to an age where SMBs are embracing technology tools in the cloud tools that help run their business more efficiently and therefore collect and store information and data at rates rivaling those of some large corporations.

In fact, more than half of the survey respondents anticipate that over the next two years, the quantity of data their small business collects will increase by more than 50 percent. This data can take on many forms, including but not limited to: email, databases, invoices, customer information, applications, mobile applications and general Internet use. Since the volume of information and data that small businesses are collecting continues to grow at an accelerated rate, it does raise two important questions how will this increased data use impact network capacity, and what needs to be done to equip SMB networks to handle this new load, both in the near term, and in the longer term if the growth trend continues?

The survey, conducted by Comcast Business Services during the third quarter of 2012, included respondents representing a wide range of industries, companies and titles among the SMB community.  Here are the results to the question, By what percentage will the quantity of data your company collects grow over the next two years?”

If the amount of data being collected by SMBs rises this significantly, it poses a great challenge for the networks responsible for transferring it, especially if the data will be moved to and from a cloud provider over a WAN connection. For SMBs this means the amount of network capacity needs to increase to handle the extra data, and to accommodate voice and video traffic as well.

Since many SMBs are using T1 lines for their WAN connectivity, what options do they have as their bandwidth needs increase? Organizations can add more T1 lines, but they will incur the additional expense of the extra lines as well as installation charges. Other legacy technologies that have been used are Frame Relay, DSL and Asynchronous Transfer Mode, or ATM, but these, too, are costly alternatives.

Luckily for SMBs, business-grade” broadband Internet services now are available with higher bandwidth levels than legacy services, while still offering affordable prices that are attractive to smaller businesses. These business broadband services provide download speeds of 100MBps and upload speeds of 10MBps, and often are offered as a package with web hosting, cloud and security products that could also be used by SMBs.

For SMBs requiring even higher speeds, Metro Ethernet, also known as Carrier Ethernet, is also available and can provide exponential increases in bandwidth levels to match the particular needs of an organization. For example, Ethernet can provide 10MBps, 50MBps, 100MBps, 500MBps and even 1 Gigabit per second (1GBps), and in some cases, 10GBps, to provide companies with enough capacity to easily handle todays volumes of data as well as the anticipated needs of the future. As an added benefit, it is also very easy to increase bandwidth levels with Ethernet. Often, it only involves a phone call to the provider, and there is no on-site installation work involved.

Ethernet can also be provided in a variety of forms:

These different types of Ethernet services deliver flexibility to meet the needs of different organizations, depending on the type of connectivity that they need (i.e. Internet only or inter-site connectivity) and if they are single-site or multi-site companies.

The move to Ethernet is already well underway. A 2012 research report by industry analyst firm Vertical Systems Group stated that the U.S. Ethernet services market topped $6 billion in 2011. Ethernet services are most readily available in major metropolitan areas in the U.S., and its availability within these markets continues to grow as providers install more fiber to reach more business customers.

Todays SMBs are collecting and moving more data than ever before. The move is already underway to higher speed services such as business-grade broadband and, for even higher speeds, Ethernet. These high-performance services will give SMBs the capacity to handle their network traffic needs both today and in the future, with the ability to easily scale up as needed.

Mike Tighe is the executive director of data services for Comcast Business Services.