New industry-poll shock: critical comms vendor says enterprises are suffering with un-critical comms. That is the gist of a new survey from Ericsson-owned Cradlepoint, now established (or viewed, at least) as the Swedish firm’s enterprise-facing private 5G business, which says that 70 percent of organisations in the US have been “financially impacted” by the loss of connectivity in the last 12 months. Worse, “30 percent” claim there has been damage to their brands, as a result; whether this proportion is of the 100-percent total or the 70-percent impacted is unclear.
What is clear, however loaded the exercise, is that enterprise connectivity outages are an issue, impacting every market. The new ‘state of connectivity’ report from Idaho-based Cradlepoint, conducted by Censuswide, polled 5,000 c-level executives and senior managers, all engaged in tech decision-making, and all at businesses with at least 250 staff, across Europe (UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Italy) and North America (Mexico, Canada, US), plus Australia; the US figure are based on a sample size of only 500, however.
The survey quizzed companies in a variety of sectors, from arts and culture, and catering and leisure, to education, finance, and healthcare, to logistics, manufacturing, and utilities. Figures from the US cohort said 96 percent of execs think “good connectivity” would bring greater resiliency, with 63 percent betting on a financial impact of at least $10 million. The same number (62 percent) said “poor connectivity” had held back sustainability projects in the last 12 months. Almost all (“more than 93 percent”) plan to deploy more IoT devices to meet energy goals, at some point.
Some of the findings sound woolier, but the message is very clear. The European poll, for example, found that three quarters (74 percent) of enterprises experience connectivity outages, and therefore operational dowdtime, for “up to two hours per week, minimum”, and that almost all (92 percent) think better connectivity would have a “positive monetary impact on the economy”. Almost half (46 percent) of respondents in Europe cite connectivity issues for driving up operational costs.
Todd Krautkremer, chief marketing officer at Cradlepoint, commented: “The data included in the report underscores how vital adequate connectivity is for many aspects of business today. It illustrates that enterprises desire to be agile and withstand unexpected changes, progress on sustainability goals, and, perhaps above all, eliminate unplanned downtime, which costs them dearly in terms of customer and brand impact.”
