Time wasters – WAN are you going to learn?'

IT departments worldwide are wasting several days each month managing tasks which should be taken care of by their network service provider.

Independent research from ICM discovered that nearly one-third of senior IT execs are spending at least one day per week maintaining their wide area network – a task which is more of a chore than a strategic challenge.

And many are waking up to the potential benefits of handing over the running of their WAN.

The survey revealed 61 per cent of companies in the UK currently outsource the running of their WAN and that figure is still growing.

The findings appear indicative of a culture of unnecessary workload eating into the valuable time of skilled IT professionals. And such routine tasks severely limit the ability of the IT department to help grow and develop – rather than simply support – the business, according to one CIO.

Tony Johnson, CIO of Virgin Retail, told silicon.com he and his peers are looking to work far more closely with the business, while maintaining the WAN represents more of a thankless counterproductive task. As such he has no qualms about it being managed out of house.

"This issue is about balancing how much we actually need to do ourselves and what we actually want to be doing," he said.

Johnson added that the network is now a commodity – like gas or electricity.

As many people don't really know, or perhaps even care, who provides their electricity – as long as it works when they flick a switch and the service is good when it doesn't – so it should be with the headache of managing their network.

Allen Timpany, CEO of Vanco, said: "The world is going from networks to services."

The research, which was carried out by ICM on behalf of virtual network operator Vanco, also revealed cost is still the major priority with 60 per cent of respondents saying cost reduction is their most important network-related issue for the next two years.

Nearly half the respondents said cost was the primary concern when selecting a network service provider.

Security was second priority and bandwidth was back up to third as ambitions previously sated by the broadband boom appear once again to have been raised.

Voice over IP was only cited as a priority for the coming two years by 16 per cent of respondents. A spokesman for Vanco said that figure is "certainly not as high as the publicity it is getting might suggest".

Simon Rogan of virtual network operator Sirocom, said that as with any outsourcing it is important companies understand they are not surrendering control but in fact just getting shot of a headache.

"What organisations don't want to do is let go totally of their control but rather they want to hand responsibility of maintaining and running their network to a trusted and proven third party," Rogan told silicon.com.