What's hot in networking? We ask Communications Design & Management

What network technology do you specialize in?

CDM provides network project delivery services as well as 24/7 fully-managed ongoing support. We provide a full spectrum of WAN, LAN and wi-fi solutions, working with a range of vendors including Juniper, HP, Cisco, Huawei and Fortinet. We also partner with Macquarie Telecom.

When did your company first get involved in this area?

CDM will proudly celebrate its 25th anniversary this year. CDM's heritage is providing end-to-end data networking solutions and structured cabling. Over 25 years, CDM has delivered many significant network projects around the country totalling over $1 billion.

Which credentials do you have that apply to networking?

CDM maintains its partnership accredited status with all of the vendors that it works with. So our national engineering team holds technical certifications across a range of vendor technologies, enabling us to design, implement and manage solutions from multiple vendors.

Who are your main distributors for networking technology?

Avnet, Ingram Micro and Dicker Data.

What cool or interesting recent developments in the networking space have you head of lately?

Monitoring, management and reporting are areas that have greatly improved. Some vendor solutions now provide full layer 7 visibility right across the network. This makes it easier to understand what application traffic is traversing your network. Understanding demands and trends makes it easier to optimise the client's network from a WAN perspective. 

Can you tell us about a recent networking deployment you have done?

In January, CDM delivered a temporary LAN and wi-fi solution for the Asian Cup. We networked five stadiums across four states as well as ancillary sites. It was an extremely tight deadline. We deployed HP networking equipment for both switching and wi-fi. Most notably there were no outages during critical operational periods. 

What is driving customers’ networking projects?

Customers' network projects are still largely driven by refresh cycles. Our clients are looking for step-change performance increases (ie, Ethernet 1GB to 10GB to 40GB or wireless 802.11n to 802.11ac), that are offered by the newer networking technologies.   

Networking is…?

Critical to every business. Business today would and does grind to a halt without a functioning network