The Enterprise Network market segment is made up of private networks run by, and usually for, big organizations and its end users (both its employees and its clients).
Historically, this market segment was comprised mostly of private Local Area Networks (LANs) and dominated by the large financial institutions based in the Northeast United States. That’s no longer true and hasn’t been for some time. Today’s enterprise networks are larger and more complex than ever. Some examples of clients in this market vertical include:
- Bloomberg LP
- Wellington Financial
- Aetna
- Traveler’s Insurance
- Bank of America
- Reuters-Thompson
- State Street Bank
- Morgan Stanley
- ESPN
- General Electric
Enterprise networks have become critical to the success of the companies employing them, which explains why security-related issues have moved to the forefront over the past five years. Ethernet and IP dominate the wireline sector, but fiber channel also plays a growing role. Virtual networks and wireless cloud applications are still relatively new and constantly evolving. Data centers and their related backup facilities have become private networks and market verticals of their own.
Challenges of Maintaining Enterprise Networks
Maintaining today’s networks is largely a race to keep up with technologies that promise faster through-puts, smaller physical footprints and increasingly dependable performance. Perhaps more than any other industry, enterprise companies are driven by time requirements. A financial institution’s engineering project literally lives by the maxim “Time is Money.”
Only the very largest of enterprise corporations can afford to operate their own labs; most corporations don’t have the in-house expertise and choose to outsource critical operations and tasks.
There’s usually also a disconnect between the User Groups (Network Ops or System Ops) and the Purchasing/Procurement Groups. User groups are often disenchanted with the continuous turnover in representation by various manufacturers. Calling a help desk or having to talk to three different representatives and then waiting several days for product or pricing information is extremely frustrating.
Core Technologies enjoys and maintains preferred vendor status and strong working relationships with many of the Fortune 500 companies located in our geographical territory. We’ve already addressed and resolved many of the hurdles sometimes associated with dealing with legal, contracts and procurement organizations within many of our clients.
Core Technologies spends the majority of our time with the actual user groups. We recognize that, very often, winning a proposal comes as a direct result of being ready when an opportunity surfaces — and virtually all opportunities are initiated at the User-Group level, not the procurement agent’s desk.
