Out of the Closet
No matter the size your organization, one thing worth pointing out to management is that IT folks always find ways to get resources for testing gear. As our Fortune 100 lab manager points out, "The lab is going to be there whether or not you formally fund it. People are going to snarf PCs, etc. Today, when you can get Internet services for $40 a month and Ethernet switches for a couple of hundred bucks, it's very easy to hide these types of expenditures." If there is a formal structure, IT is less likely to engage in covert lab operations. Such unofficial labs end up costing the company more money, as they are used less, tend to duplicate services and don't do as good a job of testing, since they're not adequately funded.
If, after you've studied all the pros and cons, you don't think you'll need a lab more than once in a while, consider outsourcing. This option can work effectively as an alternative to a permanent facility if you can't justify the payback, simply don't have lab expertise in-house and you aren't large enough to warrant additional staff (see "Testing To Go," for more on outsourcing lab work).
Writing the Proposal
You've found your allies and understand your audience, and you've considered how to justify this expense. Now it's time to write the proposal. Your first step is to lay out all of your assumptions. Make sure you spell out the types of costs a lab can help avoid. Those assumptions should be conservative: Senior managers will swat you down like a bug if you estimate every recovery from a bad patch job will take an entire day per workstation. Although cautionary numbers will not be as impressive as "I'm gonna save the company a gajillion dollars!," they will emphasize that you're being fiscally responsible (see our sample, "Cost of Downtime,").
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.
