QUALITY OF SERVICE ENSURES THAT CRITICAL BUSINESS APPLICATIONS PERFORM EFFECTIVELY
Gaining competitive advantage in today’s business climate is no simple task. Companies large and small in all corners of the world continually plan detailed strategies for adopting and upgrading technology applications and systems that contribute to success. Yet the most sophisticated technology and advanced capabilities mean nothing without adequate quality of service (QoS).
Although characteristics of QoS vary by industry and company requirements, the term generally describes a network's ability to function with a high level of reliability, operate with minimal downtime (or high availability), and ensure that bandwidth-intensive applications, such as voice and video communications, perform effectively.
“It's the difference between operating at peak required levels and just operating,” says Marc McCluskey, service director at AMR Research. As organizations become increasingly dependent on real-time data transfer and Internet-dependent applications, QoS also becomes more important. “Regardless of the industry, quality of service ranks as a top priority. Without solid network performance, organizational efficiency suffers and technology investments do not provide the desired ROI,” says McCluskey.
High Priority
QoS provides a high level of network availability, redundancy and security and manages network issues that affect performance such as bandwidth, delay, jitter, and packet loss. One or more of these factors can derail many of today's most useful applications, particularly IP video, IP telephony, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and real-time collaboration tools, all of which require extremely high network performance. By contrast, applications including Web browsing, e-mail, and file transfer protocol can endure network hiccups without noticeable performance problems.
“QoS ensures that mission-critical enterprise applications aren't affected by noncritical applications,” notes Vijay Krishnamoorthy, a Cisco Systems quality-of-service product manager.
In other words, QoS makes sure that performance-sensitive network traffic such as IP telephony takes priority. Most people will not notice if an e-mail message arrives a few seconds late, but they will notice a delay (sometimes referred to as latency) during a real-time voice conversation.
Without the right balance among the many aspects of QoS, achieving solid results is nearly impossible. “All the bandwidth in the world doesn't do any good if it's not being utilized efficiently,” says Krishnamoorthy. “The best servers, routers, and networking equipment can't provide desired results unless they're optimized to work together.”
Meet the Need
Companies need to deploy a level of service that matches their needs and application types. “Ultimately, quality is a ratio between what an organization is willing to pay for high reliability and availability and what's possible,” says McCluskey. “Every organization has to identify its pricing and protection points.”
Indeed, the QoS levels required by a major financial institution may differ greatly from those of a manufacturer or retailer. McCluskey also points out that companies need to prioritize QoS strategies according to how a network outage would impact customers, business partners, or employees.
Ultimately, McCluskey believes it's important for companies to make decisions about QoS based on an examination of their overall needs—as well as those of business units, divisions, departments, and applications.
“It's about finding the appropriate level of protection and assuming a reasonable level of risk. . . . QoS can greatly impact an organization's technology ROI,” he concludes.
Reproduced from Cisco Systems iQ Magazine (by Samuel Greengard, a business and technology writer based in Burbank, California.)
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