By Arafat Yousef, Managing Director – Middle East & Africa, Nexans Data Network Solutions
The pandemic of 2020 has made the concept of remote teams and remote work collaboration a reality. Previously used by digitally mature and advanced organisations, like high-tech companies, the requirement of enabling mobile work triggered by the need for social isolation across much of 2020, has forced all organisations to adapt to this new reality.
Wi-Fi network connectivity and power over the Ethernet networks (PoE) need to be ubiquitously available and scalable across such places of work. Flexibility and scalability of the Wi-Fi network access points, access to the Ethernet, and availability of Power over the Ethernet, are now prerequisites to support teams working in the “new normal”.
While places of work, whether they are supporting the family working and schooling at home, or employees at the office premises, are transforming, on a much wider scale, networks within buildings themselves are also transforming.
Just a few years ago, the convergence of voice into IP based, LAN data networks, was a high point of disruption and innovation. Since then, there has been a relentless trend into converging siloed networking systems into IP networks. Today, these include security systems, building management systems, access entry systems, biometric systems, digital signage, low voltage power, LED lighting.
This has spawned the term – ‘Everything over IP’ or an ‘All-IP’ approach in the convergence of isolated networks.
The benefits of this convergence of networks are many, fueling continuous industry innovation and end user adoption. Such, ‘Everything over IP’ networks, offer significant benefits ranging from savings in power, cost, time for installation, activation, modifications and upgrades of networks.
Such types of networks also reduce the chances of network failures and downtime and because of their ability to rapidly scale up or down, match today’s requirements demanded by agile organisations.
However, all these innovations and transformations are also putting pressure on the design and architecture of networks. These include:
- Mapping the networks to match the functional distribution of workers. In others words, there should be more network points and connectivity, wherever there is more employee activity.
- Creation of active consolidation points to allow networks to scale. Creation of consolidation points allow the network to support an unlimited number of devices in theory.
- Fibre To The Office (FTTO), can be used to boost redundancy and longevity. FTTO is a centralised LAN cabling technology that combines passive fibre cabling with active switches and requires no floor distributors or technical rooms. Combining fibre and copper offers the advantages of a fibre infrastructure. The concept of a digital ceiling solution is becoming increasingly relevant in digitally advanced buildings. The traditional LAN network is now being deployed vertically to support growing installation of ceiling access points, surveillance cameras, motion sensors, indoor atmospherics, amongst others. A digital ceiling approach combined with an FTTO solution could bring significant benefits in terms of flexibility and scalability to the building’s IT network infrastructure. The benefits of such, single converged networks, that support the connectivity requirements of agile organisations, are being realised every day. Hot-desking and smart desking are now logical and functional solutions realised in the office work space. For network administrators, managing a single network for operations, performance and efficiency offers huge time and cost savings.
