There is a proverb that says “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link” and this axiom has often been used to explain how a seemingly strong and healthy company could dramatically collapse. Over the past decade we have seen a number of examples ranging from Enron, WorldCom and TWA to CompUSA, Wachovia and Nortel Networks, and while the reasons behind their collapse vary from pure greed and exposure to dangerous market conditions to failure to remain competitive and an inability to recognize new trends they all have one thing in common, they neglected to address their weakest link.
Unfortunately for those companies hindsight provides little solace as once that chain has been broken there is nothing that can be done to repair it. History is littered with examples of these corporate giants who became footnotes in company failure and that list will certainly continue to expand as more companies overlook or ignore the aspects of their business that demand the most attention.
Ultimately the failure of a company comes down to poor decisions and while not every failed company will receive the attention that those listed above garnered the reason for their downfall will be the same.
Successful companies put systems in place that will ensure their business is efficient, reliable, and productive. In the eyes of many these companies are driven by employees who are entrusted to ensure these systems are followed. A great deal of attention is placed upon hiring the right people, training, creating a strong work environment, etc. All of these elements are links in a company chain but they don’t represent all of the links.
One link that often gets ignored is a company’s computer network system, a surprising omission since it is essentially the backbone of every business. A computer network system is relied upon for communication, sharing of files and documents as well as software and hardware, protection of information, and speed; all of these are elements that make a company efficient, reliable, and productive.
A company can hire the brightest people, give them the best training, and create the most comfortable working environment possible but if they don’t give these employees the tools to carry out their job the ultimate result will be failure. Of course most of those tools are delivered by the computer network system and if that link isn’t strong then the rest of the chain will be compromised.
So what makes a computer network system weak? The simple answer is somebody’s decision not to protect it. A network is naturally vulnerable to the computer disease known as fragmentation, a disease that exists and spreads on any drive that is not protected. The longer a network is exposed to fragmentation the greater the damage until eventually the network crashes, putting a company at serious risk of failing.
Fragmentation is related to the manner in which a drive saves and stores files, a system that is based on a contiguous method that places saved files one after the next with no space between. As files are recalled, modified, and resaved they no longer fit in the original space and the drive is forced to cut the excess information and store it in the next available space, creating fragmented file. Because there is no limit to how many times a file can be fragmented there can be hundreds if not thousands of pieces of a single file scattered across a drive.
These fragmented pieces cause a significant slowdown in the networks ability to operate, meaning the productivity and efficiency of employees takes a serious hit. Employees find themselves waiting for their computer to boot up, experience difficulty accessing files and data, are forced to deal with sluggish Internet, can’t always access or send email or internal messages, and the list of problems goes on.
As any business knows, these problems are a serious threat to their very existence and for all the work that goes in to hiring the best and the brightest none of that matters when they are handed a computer network system that is not operating at its best.
Failing to address the issue of fragmentation as it relates to the health of a computer network system is unquestionably putting a company’s chance of success in jeopardy.
Fortunately the health of a computer network system can quickly become the strongest link in a company’s chain. Protecting that network from fragmentation requires a simple step of installing defragmentation software. This simple step of installing defrag software will not only repair the fragmented files, joining the pieces and saving them as a single unit, it will also prevent fragmentation from returning.
As a result of installing defragmentation software a computer network’s health is restored which in turn means it is able to operate in a more efficient and reliable manner and even better, its life is extended.
Companies like Diskeeper, a market leader in defragmentation software that has been designing products that ensure the integrity of drives for almost 30 years, offer businesses an easy solution to strengthening the link represented by their computer network system. Knowing that failure is more often than not the result of a poor decision, don’t let yours be the decision not to act.
