OVERVIEW

Communications applications never stop. Whether it's a PC-based phone system in a small business, a communications server distributing calls to a large enterprise call center, a system sending packetized voice calls over data networks or a huge collection of interconnected rackmounts acting as the backbone of a telco's enhanced services division, computers are being called upon as never before to bring millions of people new and exciting communications offerings. "Computing" also implies "data storage," and of course businesses need instant access to their inventory, customer, employee and external Web databases. Most organizations operate with an ever-increasing number of business-critical systems involving communications, storage and more, such as eBusiness enabling systems, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems, e-commerce and e-mail.

But in a world where system downtime can mean the difference between profitability and failure, computer-controlled platforms for voice and data communications must have "high availability" or HA. Uptime is crucial because failure means lost revenue, lost profits and lost customers. This means they must be far more reliable than conventional PCs, allowing them to be used in "mission critical" systems. I'm not talking about only e-commerce, e-mail, groupware and databases, but also systems where you can now find multi-span T1/E1 interfaces with on-board high-density media processing ("service bureaus in a slot"), SS7 components, Voice over IP (VoIP) and Fax over IP (VoIP) processing, ATM boards, Frame Relay and ISDN PRI firmware.

According to CNT (Minneapolis, MN 763-268-6000, http://www.cnt.com), a company that provides global storage networking solutions, computer downtime costs US businesses...