The ROI of using LiveAction Software
The Financial Benefits of Using LiveAction Software for Network QoS
The network infrastructure has become a strategic business and revenue enabler for enterprises of all sizes and it represents a significant portion of any operating budget. This is especially true when the network includes multiple remote locations and high speed WAN connections. To justify this expense, IT departments need to deliver services and applications across the enterprise that not only align with the company’s business goals but also deliver the best availability, reliability, and user experience.
LiveAction software helps enterprises realize higher levels of network quality and the corresponding costs savings and increases in productivity that come with it. Although there are many factors that can improve the ROI of the network infrastructure, the following four represent significant opportunities that can be achieved quickly using LiveAction software.
- Minimizing WAN Bandwidth Costs
- Reducing Downtime and Mean Time To Repair (MTTR)
- Maximizing Utilization of Existing Network Devices
- Increasing IT Staff Proficiency and Productivity
Minimizing WAN Bandwidth Costs
Next to the cost of IT staffing, the cost of WAN connectivity is actually the second highest IT expense for many enterprises. More bandwidth is needed than ever before to support the growth of new applications and services as well as latency-sensitive voice and video traffic. Adding more bandwidth is very costly especially when multiplied by the number of WAN links to remote sites. Without proper quality of service (QoS) management, much of the added bandwidth will eventually be overtaken by low priority and scavenger traffic at the expense of voice, video, and other mission-critical applications.
LiveAction software provides a complete management solution for monitoring, troubleshooting and provisioning Cisco QoS to ensure that your bandwidth is properly allocated to support your business needs and that service levels are actually where you expect them to be.
Reducing Downtime and Mean Time To Repair (MTTR)
Because operations such as manufacturing and financial transactions depend on a high-availability network, the direct costs of an outage can easily number into the thousands of dollars per hour. The indirect costs from lower employee productivity can also result in severe economic impacts.
According to reports by Infonetics Research, large organizations lose on average approximately 3.6 percent of annual revenues to network downtime with mid-size organizations losing about 1 percent. These losses come in the form of decreased employee productivity, damaged customer and partner relationships, and direct revenue losses due to lost orders or contractual penalties.
LiveAction software is a proactive network management solution that allows you to detect problems and take corrective action before your users and systems are impacted. The software provides real-time and historical traffic flow, QoS and routing views, and its ability to drill-down and isolate the problem will decrease the mean time to repair and reduce the financial impact to the enterprise.
Maximizing Utilization of Existing Network Devices
Enterprises often purchase additional hardware devices such as WAN optimizers to improve network visibility or to implement QoS. This leads to added upfront capital costs as well as new recurring operational costs in the form of increased power, heat, rack space and maintenance.
What many enterprises do not realize is that many of these same capabilities and more are already included with the Cisco network routers and switches that they already own. Other enterprises may be aware that these capabilities exist but they do not have enough expertise or staff to unlock these features due to the complexity of the Cisco command line interface or CLI.
LiveAction software provides a highly interactive graphical interface for Cisco devices that makes these embedded features instantly accessible and very easy to use and understand without the need to learn the CLI or to purchase third-party hardware. Considering that WAN optimization hardware for just one site may cost around $7000 plus $2000 per site for annual maintenance and support, LiveAction can quickly pay for itself with upfront and annual savings, not to mention better network performance and reliability.
Increasing IT Staff Proficiency and Productivity
Having the right software tools available can greatly improve the effectiveness and expertise of your IT team. LiveAction’s network-wide visibility of traffic flows, QoS performance, routing, proactive monitoring and intelligent QoS configuration can cut the time to perform common tasks by 30-50%. This increase in effectiveness and the use of proactive monitoring has the additional benefit of reducing trouble-ticket volume which further increases staff productivity.
Other productivity increases can be realized for new IT projects such as rolling out applications or services such as VoIP, telepresence, and UC. For each of these projects, LiveAction typically provides a 30-35% labor savings by providing better network awareness and visibility and the ability to modify QoS policies quickly and easily without the CLI.
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White Paper—The Financial Benefits of Using LiveAction Software for Network QoS
This white paper uses real-world examples to demonstrate how implementing network quality of service management can provide quantifiable cost savings, improved profitability and ROI, reduced risk, and enhanced productivity.
LiveAction ROI Calculator
A quality QoS management tool like LiveAction can yield considerable cost savings both immediately and over time. If you are planning to expand services and bandwidth or need to mitigate the effects of network downtime, our ROI calculator functions as both a cost/savings spreadsheet as well as a checklist for planning and budgeting.
