Can we manage without a Computer Network?
This is just a light (perhaps humorous) article to explore the possibilities of managing a company without a computer network. Actually, this is the result of a discussion we had with a customer around seven years back (who seriously considered not to connect the computers in his company with a network!). It may sound a little insane but back then, not having a network made some sense. Who knows, you might be surprised at what you have not considered till now!! 🙂
I don’t remember the exact discussion but it went like this:
(Theirs was a small Government manufacturing plant which had not yet implemented a computer network. There were some 200-250 employees – few of them having computers and very few having Internet access. We went to ‘position’ a computer network).
We: How do you manage without a network?
Client: We don’t need a network. We can manage without one. Why is it needed at all?
We: If you have some files, and you want to send it to someone else’s computer – what do you do?
Client: We copy it in Floppy, CD or USB drive and sent it to the concerned person with the Peon.
We: Ok, but what about email?
Client: If they need to send a mail, they write in a paper or send the data to us (physically using CD/USB drive). We will send the mail using our broadband Internet connection. Of course, they need to take a couple of approvals to do this (!). They can come to the EDP department to check their email.
We: Where is your email server?
Client: Yahoo (company@yahoo.com – personal email address; gmail wasn’t yet popular back then)
We: How about Internet?
Client: We have three individual broadband connections in our room, and four more to top officials who are authorized to use Internet. If someone needs to browse, they can take approval from their higher authority and come to our room and browse the Internet.
We: What do the users do for printing documents?
Client: Same thing, they need to take approvals, send the data (CD/USB) through the peon. We will take print outs and send it back to them.
We: You don’t have any machinery that needs to connect to the LAN?
Client: Some of them can – we connect a PC directly to it and run the required software from there. Its just a management console.
We: Do you store your important documents on PC connected to the Internet? How about security?
Client: We have a small server to store important documents. But it is not connected to Internet. All our PC’s have anti-virus software to check for virus from CD/ USB drives.
We: Do you have a website? Where is your web server?
Client: The Government has given us some space in their web server – We can host it there. We send the data to the department people, and they upload content. We have very less content on website right now – so its not a problem.
We: You don’t have any industrial network based applications? ERP? How do track the various manufacturing processes?
Client: Nothing that requires a network – they can all be managed individually. We track them manually (and) using Excel / Word reports, which gets manually transferred between departments. I think we are quite small for ERP.
We: So, why did you call us?
Client: I wanted to know about the cost of setting up a computer network. We are considering it for the future.
We: Well, you need some fiber cables between departments, Cat 5 cables, conduits/casing for the cables, racks, UPS, firewall, router, core switch, access switches, and some more components.
Client: Can’t we use LAN extenders and telephone network to transfer data?
We: You can, but its not a long term solution.
Client: But your computer network looks like a very expensive proposition to me. Even if I send an approval request, its very difficult for getting approval! And what will the peon’s do after that? Their work will be reduced!
We: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
🙂 🙂 🙂