Setting up a modern business without a network would be like building a house without plumbing. And not connecting this network to other networks at remote offices, trading partners or with the web, would be like trying to get by using a well in the back garden.

According to David Ball, channel marketing director at network management vendor Computer Associates, networks are becoming much more important to people's businesses. "If your network goes down, you don't call the systems manager, you call in the receiver," he said.

And in the same way that the average householder takes it for granted that there will always be water on tap, the average network user demands fast and reliable access to applications and data, without ever having to wonder where they are located or how they are delivered.

Peter Joseph, corporate business strategist at Novell, said: "The consumer does not care what the infrastructure is. They want the service to be the same wherever they go. In the past, we talked to customers about building a local area network (Lan) or a wide area network (Wan), but having separate networks for different kinds of people no longer works."

Like many other vendors, Novell sees the modern network as a single entity which can embrace employees, contractors, customers and suppliers whose status determines which areas they are allowed to access. Single entities require a holistic view from suppliers and resellers.

Paul Cunningham, marketing director at Cisco distributor Comstor, said: "It's no longer enough to say that we do telephony or data networks or cabling. The successful companies of today are those that realise these technologies are all interdependent."

There are still Lans and Wans, of course; the former being largely single-site and free, and the latter carrier-based and still capable of incurring significant telecoms costs. Now, they are likely to be described functionally as intranets, extranets or websites.

Ecommerce and the internet are undoubtedly the main drivers in the networking market today. This can involve setting up a voice-enabled consumer website linked to a telephone call centre, or an extranet automating a supply chain, or simply upgrading internet access from a dial-up email box to a broadband, always-on connection. Browsers and portals dominate the front end of networking, and internet standards such as XML are permeating through back-end technologies such as operating systems and network management tools.

According to Andrew Glen, UK ecommerce marketing manager at Sun Microsystems, reliability and availability are crucial, since nobody wants to take their website down to do a back-up. "We see a significant emphasis on networking as a pervasive, round-the-clock environment where a major criterion is the service provided," he explained.

And in such a fast-changing environment where traffic volumes can mushroom overnight, forethought and adaptability are key ingredients. Rajive Kapoor, chairman at network reseller Systems Group International, said: "Scalability is critical for a successful website because it's so difficult to predict the demand. Our clients are driving towards scalable solutions, often using leading-edge technologies."

But there are other drivers as well as ecommerce. The sheer volume and variety of data available today means that fast, flexible networks with fast, high-capacity storage are essential.

Hot stuff
There is now a distinct trend towards flexible working, with staff operating from home, at client sites or on the road, or sharing office facilities by 'hot desking'. This creates a need for 'visitor-based networking', whereby the roving laptop or palmtop user can connect to data networks, printers and so on, in offices, hotels and other locations, and remote users can get fast, reliable dial-in access.

There is also an increasing demand for integration. This may be between different systems and networks or between the network infrastructure itself and the applications which sit on top, such as the ability to pass a customer query from a web page or Wap phone to a telephone call centre while maintaining the contextual data and suiting the information to the device.

Even the perception that the internet will hold the key to cheap wide-area communications is not a foregone conclusion, according to Allen Timpany, chief executive at network service provider Vanco.

"Only about 15 per cent of our enquiries are around internet-based virtual private networks [VPNs] for in-company communications," he said. "The rest is for dedicated circuits to guarantee the service and response times required."

Timpany said that bandwidth prices have tumbled by about half in the last six months alone, and predicts that they will continue to do so. A line from London to Frankfurt which cost £40,000 per megabit in 1998 now costs no more than £10,000 per megabit, and could be down to a few hundred pounds within two years.

The virtues of VPNs
VPNs, which send encrypted data and voice traffic via the web instead of using dedicated leased lines, are gaining in popularity. VPN-like functions are being increasingly built into standard networking products such as firewalls, and even operating systems. Windows 2000 has public key infrastructure support built in.

And it's not just data that needs to be encrypted. Voice traffic is increasingly being carried on VPNs, and the integration of voice and data - within the office and without - is a major trend in networking today, with network vendors claiming that their products are now a match for traditional PBX systems.

Shane Buckley, vice president for channels and original equipment manufacturers at 3Com, believes that the key is to save users money by putting voice, video, fax and data traffic onto the same platform. "In our first quarter, 3Com was the third largest manufacturer of PBX systems in North America, and our telephony products are exclusively Lan-based," he said.

As well as saving on infrastructure costs, voice-over IP can be used to 'talk-enable' websites, allowing customers to click on a button and be connected to a telephone operator in a call centre. It can also enable remote users to make voice, data and multimedia calls over a single connection, or be used for distributing presentations or multimedia training materials across a company network.

"We are seeing definite interest in IP telephony and voice," said Cunningham. "There are enough proven reference sites in the corporate space and they are trickling over into smaller businesses. The potential savings include not just least-cost routing, but a lot of management issues as well because there is only one infrastructure to manage."

The whole area of network management is currently undergoing a thorough shake-out. A key issue is prioritising, or 'traffic grooming'. This ensures that real-time communications such as voice and video, where transmission delays can cause broken-up sound or jerky pictures, get priority over data traffic such as email.

"A network is not just about getting bits of data from point to point as fast as possible," explained Gerhard Unger, vice president of service provision at enterprise network specialist Avaya. "There are all sorts of data, some very critical in terms of time and delay, and others not so critical. For time-critical data, you need a predictable network. In the past, the industry built unpredictable networks, and that was sufficient."

Predictive management, which aims to fix or highlight potential problems before they occur, is becoming popular. Is a server's hard disk about to fill up, or is a router nearing its maximum capacity? Load balancing between groups of servers is also becoming a key feature, as a way of coping with traffic fluctuations on big websites.

And more automation with increased central control can save on human resources. "You want something you can manage from a central point, especially in a lights-out environment," said Mark Tennant, Windows 2000 server product manager at Microsoft. Functions include preventing users from tinkering with system settings, and drag-and-drop deployment of software upgrades.

After several years in the wings, wireless networking is starting to make progress. Maximum speeds have jumped from 2Mbit to 11Mbit, which is slightly faster than standard wired ethernet. The obvious applications are in listed buildings or old offices that do not have false floors or ceilings, where laying cables is difficult or illegal, and in temporary accommodation or where layouts may need to be changed.

But wireless is generally used to provide extra capacity on top of existing networks, especially where large numbers of temporary users with laptops may gather, such as in meeting rooms, canteens or hot-desking environments. It is something of an extravagance, however, with PC cards costing up to £200 each, compared with £25 for a standard ethernet card. Most users have 10Mbit ethernet or 100Mbit fast ethernet, which is ample for most applications.

Evolution, not revolution
Core networking technologies, from switches to operating systems, tend to progress by evolution rather than revolution. Servers are getting bigger, with concentrations of super servers replacing the departmental versions of the 1980s and 1990s.

And dedicated set-ups, such as storage area networks, are gaining ground. Some businesses double their storage requirements every nine months, and a high-speed, 24-hour network of disk drives and tape streamers, where back-ups can be taken and new devices added without shutting down the network, is now considered the only solution.

Operating systems are becoming layered, with Microsoft's Windows 2000 and Novell's Netware coming in three versions for small to medium sized enterprises, large offices and enterprise networks. Linux is also gaining ground for its low cost, high reliability and rapid development.

Indeed, networking has become so pervasive that it could be argued that there is no such thing as a distinct networking market any more. "It creates a lot of opportunities, and it doesn't segment our business as it used to, which is good for us," said Kapoor.

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