It's not the kind of thing many people actively think about. For the most part, a lot of them just take it for granted. But with the start of 2013 comes—or should come—a new commitment to Business Ethernet, viewed through the lens of several powerful new developments that are on the horizon, and having the means available to take advantage of these new developments.

The business environment in general is in rapid flux. New technologies are coming online, and those technologies that have already been there are expanding or occasionally dying off. Things like cloud computing and the ever-growing bring your own device (BYOD) movement are putting a lot of strain on a network, yet at the same time, they're opening up new ground. Having the necessary infrastructure on hand to take advantage of these new movements in business can be a lifesaver in the long term.

The growth of analytics in business is another good reason to be prepared for more traffic. Being able to put more traffic where it's needed, or move traffic away from where it isn't, means a better, smoother use of overall capacity. Being able to move information to where it's needed, from one place to another, rapidly and without incident is a key measure of business success.

Perhaps one of the biggest reasons to have a properly robust and scalable Ethernet system in play is the rise of Big Data. Big Data has incredible powers to predict trends and notice opportunities missed, but since Big Data depends on large amounts of data to both process and analyze, it thus depends on a system with sufficient throughput to move all that data into play.

These are all major uses of business Ethernet, of course, but there are plenty more emerging. The process of “convergence,” in which systems become consolidated instead of diffuse to reduce redundancies, improve efficiency and save money, is one such system. The rise of the so-called “Internet of Things”, which features more (and more different kinds of) devices in general mean that more bandwidth is required to drive them. Failing to have sufficient bandwidth in place reduces its overall effectiveness, and devices at half-strength only do, well, half the job.

The key takeaway, however, is that regardless of what's going on tomorrow, six months from now, or five years from now, readiness is an important factor of any business' operations. Having the capacity on hand to take on what's big today, tomorrow, or in the farther-flung future, is a smart idea in general. Sure, tailoring the capacity to what's needed prevents waste and keeps costs down, but it's always a good idea to budget just a little more than needed to ensure room for growth. Room to grow allows companies to keep up with the biggest new developments as they arrive, not scrambling to play catch-up, which is the position a business should want more than anything.