Why the Internet still fails most businesses

We’ve all read a forest’s worth of stories on how the Internet is changing business. Because of the Internet, we can interact with people an ocean away as easy as talking to a neighbor. We can buy and sell in a truly global market, and a trend that starts in a tiny backwater can explode almost overnight to captivate the entire connected world.

Yet, for all of its power, the Internet is better for some businesses than others. Let me ask you three quick questions about your business to illustrate this point.

Does your business:

1. Have more than one location?
2. (If you have more than one), are all of your offices confined to one region, or are they geographically dispersed (that is with at least one office more than 500 miles away from the nearest sister office)?
3. Rely on a single ISP for your business-grade Internet links?

If you answered “no” to all of the questions above, the Internet is probably serving your business just fine. With only a single location or with multiple locations within a confined region, being close to other workers you may need to collaborate with, lets you sidestep many, many problems. For instance, you won’t be plagued by the long-haul Internet traffic problems large enterprises have to deal with as they serve workers in far-flung branch offices.

And of those large enterprises serving a dispersed workforce, if you have multiple ISPs to choose from, you can choose the highest-performing links to ensure that your workers get access to the resources you need.

However, if you answered “yes” to any of these, the Internet isn’t the competitive advantage you may believe it to be. In fact, it could be holding you back versus your competitors.

During my time with Aryaka, I’ve worked with a variety of enterprises, from small ones with a single headquarters and one branch office to globally dispersed enterprises with 150 distinct offices or more. These companies have revenues anywhere from $5M to $95B, and have served branch workers in the U.S., China, Brazil, South Africa, India, Japan and 50 other countries.

My point here isn’t to give you my CV, but to point out that working for Aryaka means working with business of all shapes and sizes, and during my time working with those businesses, I’ve learned over and over again about how the public Internet fails business.

There’s very little that is consistent across these varied businesses, other than one thing: when I first meet with them, none of them are happy with how the Internet serves their businesses.

Read on to know three of the most common reasons for this discontent.