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The use of the optimal wide-area network redundancy in decision making

M.B.A. / Electronic Data Systems (EDS) Africa is part of EDS International, one of the largest outsourcing companies in the world. EDS's clients expect EDS to have the required knowledge and decision-making skills to ensure that their Wide area NETWORK (WAN) redundancy is in line with the business requirement. This is a careful balance between spending money on redundancy compared with the cost of WAN downtime to the business. This implies that EDS's management must realise when the WAN design is not optimal. A decision must then be made to change the design to incorporate the correct redundancy. EDS Africa incurs substantial costs related to services supplied by Telkom (the only Telecommunication company allowed to rent WAN data lines to customers in South Africa at this point in time. They are owned by the government.). At present EDS is unable to measure Telkom's up-times using proper historical data, and using applied business statistics. (Tony Webster, 1998). Telkom does not provide EDS with any service level guarantees. When a company out-sources business to EDS, the two parties usually sign a Service Level Agreement (SLA). This agreement will state the network up-time and conditions of conducting business between the two parties. EDS generally excludes Telkom problems from the SLA, as they cannot be held responsible for problems that are outside of their control...

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uj/uj:3639
Date05 February 2014
Source SetsSouth African National ETD Portal
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
RightsUniversity of Johannesburg

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