Poor Wan performance wasting staff time

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Slow Wan links are affecting staff productivity, according to a new survey.

The research found that 25 percent of employees do nothing while waiting for files to download across an organisation's Wan. The study of 130 IT and network managers in the UK and Ireland found that most employees' favourite activities while waiting to data downloads were making tea and gossiping.

The research, carried out by application performance appliance company Riverbed Technology found that 50 per cent of respondents felt that application performance at remote sites needed to be ten times faster than they are at present. A third thought it should be up to 50 times faster.

Nearly one in five IT managers saw slow Wan speeds as an impediment to consolidation of datacentres. Another 18 per cent they did not have enough bandwidth to run applications.

"Many users find 'everyday' Wan-based applications too slow, and will often find other ways to do their job," said Clive Longbottom, service director at analysts Quocirca. "Wan acceleration can mean the difference between centralised applications driving remote worker productivity over the Wan or staff creating their own processes in each location to get round the problem."

Mark Lewis, marketing director at Riverbed Technology said that poor application performance across the Wan is impacting business productivity.

"In addition to time wasted as employees wait for file downloads, organisations are delaying initiatives such as IT consolidation that would improve security, reduce costs and improve operational efficiency," said Lewis.

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