In business, success flows from ideas and innovation. But it also requires the means to execute new plans efficiently, effectively, and rapidly. Do that, and you won’t just satisfy customers and develop deeper, stronger relationships. You’ll do it better, and sooner, than the competition.

Today’s companies have an array of tools to help them boost their business, and their competitive advantage. There’s the cloud, a game-changing model where applications are housed and maintained by third-party providers— allowing companies to better steer their focus and resources on efforts that can grow their business. There are remote access technologies, which enable companies to expand their footprint and leverage mobile employees and telecommuters. And there are the business continuity services that ensure that even in an emergency, data will be accessible and customers will be taken care of as always.

Yet as versatile and valuable as these tools are, they won’t work — or at least, won’t work as well as they could — without one key element: a robust, reliable network. Traditionally, the network has been viewed as a necessary commodity that doesn’t require much contemplation. But companies that take this view miss the opportunity to get ahead of the competition. For the network doesn’t just enable business. It empowers it. With a strong network, both on-premise and cloud-based applications run smoother, faster, and more reliably. Applications hosted in centralized data centers perform better with lower latency. Remote offices and employees are better connected and more productive. Business continuity isn’t just planned; it’s ensured. The network is something that needs to be cared about, optimized, and gotten just right.

But how do businesses get the network right? The first step is to consider it — along with applications and storage — an essential component of a well-designed, holistic IT strategy. The next step is to realize just what it is that makes a network perform well. While bandwidth is important for enabling large amounts of data to be sent and received quickly, so, too, is a network’s reliability, its capacity to identify different types of traffic and prioritize them, and ability to minimize latency.

IT executives increasingly view reliable, high-capacity bandwidth as a transformational or strategic asset – specifically Ethernet-powered bandwidth. A wildly popular and proven networking protocol, Ethernet enables low latency networks that are scalable, cost effective, and easy to secure and manage. It doesn’t just connect the business with the cloud, data centers, backup providers, and remote offices and employees. It connects them quickly and reliably, reducing delays and limitations. Ethernet is a game-changing technology that empowers businesses to change the game, as well.