Even if you’re familiar with these 10 things to consider when choosing a branch solution, you might not be sure about how to overcome the challenges of deploying branch networks. Here are some of those challenges.
Deploying Your Branch Network is a Physical Ordeal
Typically, deploying a branch network involves sending lots of equipment and staff to each satellite location. This is easier said than done, as anyone with any experience can tell you that it can be quite a monumental undertaking. That’s because there are many pieces to set into motion (figuratively and literally).
For starters, you need to define the location’s networking needs, and then develop a plan to set up your devices appropriately. When you’re ready, you need to ship your stacks of equipment to the location, which can take plenty of time and cost a lot of money, especially if the site is isolated.
You also need to define your staff needs and coordinate schedules. Putting the right personnel on-site subjects you to travel times and expenses, which can increase substantially even with minor delays.
Juggling all this can make it extremely difficult to stick to your timelines.
Managing the Branch Pulls Your Resources Away
Once you have all your devices and personnel on-site, all essential duties must be performed at the location. This includes not only your initial set up, but also for ongoing maintenance and management.
Installing, configuring, and provisioning your branch network requires staff to connect to each device. Using the command line interface (CLI) and other tools, they need to perform the tedious tasks that come with manually configuring every component in the stack.
The same goes for troubleshooting issues and managing the location going forward. If a critical issue arises, an outage occurs, or a change must be made, you need to put staff on-site. To keep the branch running, it’s imperative that you maintain some sort of physical staff presence at or near the location, which pulls them away from more critical business duties.
Scaling Doesn’t Scale Well
Deploying one branch network can be a challenge when you follow the typical methods. So what happens when you try to set up three, four, five — or fifteen — new locations?
As you can imagine, the logistics involved can make for a very hairy business situation, one that can bog down your resources and devour your budgets. Think of how costly it could be sending a dozen locations’ worth of equipment through customs, on top of the travel expenses necessary for many teams of specialized staff.
In short, scaling without the right tools and practices requires you to devote heaps of time and resources.
The Good News is, Nodegrid Makes it Easy
ZPE Systems’ Nodegrid platform was built for branch networking. It includes everything you need to deploy, manage, and scale your branch networks. Features like all-in-one devices and intuitive software cut your stack in half (or more), while ZPE Cloud makes configuration management quick and easy.