IT Centralization: Playing To Satellite's Strengths
The surge in service package sales should not blur success in other sectors of the private network enterprise market. One of these is good ol' business networks, the national and international data backbones that keep business LANs connected over WANs.
In this sector, the trend toward IT centralization in both business and government is playing to satellite's advantage, says Corda. "In organizations large and small, there is a push on to rationalize and cost-effectively manage data networks," he explains. "Typically, this means centralizing the management and control of private networks at a single point in the organization. When this happens, private satellite networks are well-poised to become an organization's telecom solution of choice."
The reason satellites can triumph over terrestrial networks is due to what could be termed 'technological fragmentation.' Specifically, the terrestrial telecom market is comprised of many regional players, each of which make their own decisions as to which data delivery technologies they implement. This technologically fragmented approach has led to different terrestrial carriers deploying different broadband platforms and protocols, IP notwithstanding. As long as a multi-regional/multi-national company manages each office's data communications locally, this is not a problem. But try to pull all these different delivery platforms into a centrally controlled network and chaos can occur!
In contrast, a single national/international satellite-delivered network provides a single, coherent network structure that is easy for one office to manage. Hence, when a corporation decides to centralize its data transmission operations, the extra money paid to establish a single private satellite network is offset by savings in managing incompatible terrestrial networks. "Enterprise customers want homogenous solutions that can be deployed and managed enterprise-wide from a single point," Corda says. "Terrestrial networks often fail to provide this capability, requiring a lot of extra IT people to be deployed in different locations to keep the enterprise WAN connected."
The Puerto Rico Department of Education, for example, is using satellite broadband services to connect more than 1,500 Puerto Rico schools to the Internet. With this service, the schools now have two-way Internet access plus the ability to make VoIP calls between the schools and the Puerto Rico Department of Education, all managed from a single location.
Of course, there are times when enterprise customers want the advantages of satellite, combined with the savings offered by terrestrial ADSL. No problem. Many satellite service providers offer both terrestrial and satellite links, combining the best of both worlds into a reasonably-priced, end-to-end solution for enterprise customers. "Our customers do not care how their data gets from Point A to Point B; only that it does at a reliability rate and price that they can live with," says Corda.
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