Business Ethernet
services: How
enterprise Ethernet
architecture powers
the customer experience

As small businesses grow, network requirements and CX become more important. Enterprise Ethernet services can help growing businesses because Ethernet connectivity provides dedicated routing and switching resources that help deliver data and application performance across common platforms.

Ethernet is a protocol, or technology, initially used in the 1990s for connecting devices in local area networks (LAN). Ethernet quickly overtook competing LAN technologies of the day to emerge as the standard transmission method for LAN applications.

In the 1990s, wide area networks (WAN) typically used time division multiplexing (TDM) transmission methods that supported data at the “T1” speed of 1.5 Mbps. However, explosive growth in the internet and bandwidth-intensive applications increased the need for much higher data transmission speeds.

Unfortunately, TDM—and later asynchronous transfer mode (ATM)—technologies are relatively complex. They simply do not scale well to higher transmission speeds. Ethernet, on the other hand, is a simpler technology that scales well to high transmission speeds.

In use since the 1990s, Ethernet is widely installed, serving as a standard for data formatting and transmission. Ethernet services, a packet-based technology, is how countless people and businesses connect to the internet.

Today, Ethernet can support WAN access speeds up to 100 Gbps for Internet Dedicated Ethernet (IDE), Private IP, E-Line, and E-LAN services. Given these strengths, it is not surprising that Ethernet has become a LAN/WAN standard used in countless applications around the globe.

Handling the demands of modern apps and the explosive growth in the Internet of Things (IoT), mobile technology requires a strong, secure network that unifies employees, apps, devices and customers. Ethernet services can help you optimize and simplify your network operations.

With technology powering every facet of your operations, your enterprise communications network is more important than ever. Ethernet services can provide a flexible architecture for the foundation that your communications, data analytics, IoT machinery and more need to effectively run your business.

But keep in mind—with or without Ethernet—if you’re not careful, you can end up with an architecture that is complicated and inefficient. This not only can prevent you from having the fast, flexible network you need to compete, but also can significantly impact your overall customer experience.

Your architecture approach has a direct impact on your ability to support customer-critical applications and provide support for business continuity. If you don’t have a network in place that can meet your needs for secure and reliable connectivity, all your other customer experience initiatives are at risk of grinding to a halt.

If 2020 demonstrated anything, it’s that disasters can and do happen. Business continuity and disaster planning are critical to keeping a business connected with employees and customers during a crisis, and Ethernet services can play a key role.

Many continuity plans involve recovering from short-term disruptions like a flood, earthquake or tornado, but the pandemic showed us that businesses need continuity plans that allow them to quickly adapt and work in new ways for months or even years at a time.

With both customers and employees sheltering at home during the pandemic, enterprises needed to enable employees to pivot quickly to remote work while providing customers with digital, contact-free ways to interact with them. In addition, businesses needed to overcome supply chain disruptions, track employee health data and navigate a whipsawing economy.

With an adaptable enterprise Ethernet architecture, organizations are able to deliver the business continuity services necessary. Automatic data backups and cloud data storage ensure that critical information remains protected and accessible, while cloud services like software as a service, infrastructure as a service, and platform as a service enable employees to work as effectively on their couches as they do at their office desks.

In addition, these cloud services can provide the adaptability that enterprises need to introduce new digital services that meet the demands of customers without requiring expensive, time-consuming implementations.

The pandemic revealed a critical weakness for many enterprises: while employees may be able to work from home, customers are still calling your office. As phones rang in empty offices, many enterprises struggled to reestablish effective communications with customers, forcing many employees to give out their personal phone numbers or communicate only over email. For a company with a public-facing phone number on their website that is usually answered by a receptionist at a desk, those calls could go directly to voicemail, perhaps never to be checked and returned.

However, an effective enterprise Ethernet architecture enables a unified platform of communication tools and solutions. With a click of a button, office numbers can be rerouted automatically to employee cell phones, allowing staff to work from anywhere.

In addition, unified communications ties all your communication channels into a single platform. This allows employees to seamlessly jump back and forth between calls, texts, video meetings, group chats and email throughout their business day without having to manage siloed communication systems. That way, employees can focus on the message they’re trying to communicate instead of deciding which channel to use to deliver it.

Ethernet services make it easy to handle multiple Ethernet, Private IP or Internet Dedicated Ethernet (IDE) circuits with a single access. This provides the flexibility to create a robust Ethernet architecture that can deliver the data and services necessary for a winning customer experience.

Learn more about Verizon Ethernet services and discover how an ethernet architecture can build the network your business needs for digital transformation.