The Windup
Before you pitch a product-testing lab, do your homework. Find allies and know your audience. It helps if your credibility and reputation are spotless well before you start writing the proposal. Because testing labs don't contribute directly to the profit margin, you must be known as a good steward of corporate funds--someone who knows when a $4,000 router can do the same job as that $40,000 one. Otherwise, you can expect significant difficulty justifying the lab, no matter how good your business proposal is.
Assuming you have the credibility you need, you can begin to identify why your organization--not just your IT department--needs a testing lab. Such a facility requires a significant investment in capital and effort, and once started, it demands care and feeding. When identifying the need, look beyond the task at hand and prepare to explain why you'll need the lab on an ongoing basis.
You also must find people to listen to you. For certain kinds of labs, such as usability labs, it's hard to quantify their impact on the organization. Take the advice of one lab manager at a Fortune 100 consumer products company, who suggests linking your testing lab to product value at a senior director or vice president level as early as possible. A senior management sponsor will not only provide management support, but also can be a good source for getting the figures to build out the valuation of your testing setup. And, assuming you get to the proposal stage, your sponsor can provide a sanity check.
Beyond your sponsor, also consider the audience you're pitching to. Are you trying to sell a lab to an IT-friendly group, or is the management team leery of IT's spendthrift ways? You'll probably be fighting the perception that testing labs are an excuse for techies to play with their toys--not exactly a compelling business case.
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
Maintaining existing network infrastructures often incurs huge technical debt before newer technologies are adopted over time.
Amid ongoing regional uncertainties, telecom infrastructure in the Middle East has expand to include terrestrial low-latency network infrastructure, which offers resilience and agility in navigating political complexities without relying solely on undersea networks.
