In response to the Coronavirus crisis, the Irish government has announced the closure of all schools, colleges and childcare facilities, as well as restrictions on public gatherings which will take effect from 6pm this evening. The taoiseach said that people should work remotely where possible.
It is anticipated that there will be increased demand for network and cloud resources as people rely on the Internet for remote work, business and study.
Many companies have run trials of their remote working capabilities. Blacknight will conduct a full test tomorrow in which all our staff will work from home. Our remote working policies are well established and we have systems and technology in place to ensure that there will be no interruption to customer service.
We can help our customers with remote working also. Tools like Microsoft Teams and the wider Office 365 suite of applications are designed to allow secure collaboration with co-workers wherever they may be. A Cloud Virtual Server can be easily configured to enable secure Remote Desktop Protocol access to applications from remote computers.
We’ve built a state-of-the-art network with first class connectivity to major internet platforms. As part of our network management, Blacknight routinely adds additional capacity to cater for future demand. We recently increased our capacity at five Internet Exchange Points in Europe, including INEX (Internet Neutral EXchange) in Dublin. In addition to this, we have added new Private Network Interconnects (PNIs) to Cloud providers and Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). These allow us to easily absorb large spikes in network traffic, without impacting the overall network. Since January we have increased our core metro capacity in Dublin and added additional national connectivity.
We have also taken steps to increase our stock on hand of parts and materials. INEX and our other partners have implemented similar measures to increase their capacity.
Blacknight will continue to provide its normal support, sales and service without interruption. If you have queries or concerns, please contact us in the usual way by phone or email.
About the Author: Conn Ó Muíneacháin
