Save Your Job : Buy 2 Spares For Mission Critical Networks

They know that there is little to choose between new and refurbished units when it comes to reliability, and on the cost front, the issue is a genuine 'no brainer' – the cost of a refurbished switch or router can be as little as one tenth that of a new unit.

While this 'no maintenance contracts' strategy may sound radical, it is by no means unprecedented. I gather from a close friend in the UK's largest telecoms company that one of the City of London's largest and most respected investment banks adopted the approach some time ago.

They do not use any external network maintenance company, and only use their network devices' manufacturer for software updates and TAC access. With sufficient engineering resource on their payroll, entrusting the support of their network to a third party makes no sense – doing so would drive up both costs and risk.

This investment bank has done the job properly: they keep not one or even two but three disaster recovery systems in place. By doing so, they ensure they are proofed against almost any imaginable hardware failure, as well as other potential disasters such as terrorist attack.

Even with this level of redundancy in place, they still make significant savings, which they plough back into the latest technology for the core of their network.

Companies that do things the same way that they have always been done tend to be the also-rans. Companies that innovate, finding new and better ways of operating, tend to be the high-flyers and the market-leaders.

Indeed, in the current environment of deepening economic gloom, with tightening budgets and contracting markets, survival itself may well depend on such innovation.