Greater Network Efficiency and Business Resiliency

The shift from working in the office to working at home has increased the number of devices, physical sites, and network traffic. IT departments, facing the daunting task of supporting hundreds – even thousands — of remote workers, have prioritized digital transformation projects to meet new demands, including:

Safeguarding network traffic
Providing security for every employee, everywhere
Reimagining safe and secure office spaces

CIOs/CFOs are turning to Black Box to help them define, design, and implement the future of work, including what business resiliency and digital transformation mean for their enterprises — and how to anticipate and capitalize on new market opportunities created by shifts in consumer and employee behavior.

Respond, Retool, and Reimagine

The pandemic accelerated the need for enterprises to modernize technology infrastructure and reimagine business, including accelerating data and digital platforms. Black Box can help enterprises design, deploy, and manage an optimized network for secure work — whether it’s remote, onsite, or hybrid.

icon_secure-remote-work

Secure Remote Worker

Give your enterprise secure network access, ensure data privacy, maintain control and enforcement policies, and protect against malware across an exponential growth in endpoints.

icon_reimagined-workplace

Reimagined Workplace

Create and maintain a post-pandemic workplace that’s safe for boundless collaboration and true resiliency, including working from anywhere on any device with all policies and procedures in tow.

icon_transformed-network

Transformed Network

Design a resilient network environment and deploy it locally and/or globally, at one site or hundreds with consistent, fast, repeatable outcomes. Back it up with remote IT support, proactive maintenance and expert monitoring.

View Infographic

Edge Networking Transformation

Black Box’s technicians specialize in core capabilities that can help your enterprise securely optimize its network for remote traffic; safeguard corporate assets; and build a phased plan that makes the most effective use of your existing environment and maps out the digital transformation journey.

SD-WAN

Connects enterprise networks — including branches and data centers — over large geographic distances providing centralized visibility, automation, and security.

Learn More

Wi-Fi 6

Supports a distributed mobile workforce wirelessly indoors and out (in converged management with 5G).

Learn More

Security

Integrated solutions include advanced security features, embedded automation, and intelligence tools to optimize and secure core and edge networks.

Learn More

Global Multisite Deployments

Manages installs in a timely, repeatable way across hundreds of sites around the globe.

Learn More

So Long 9-to-5

Attracting and retaining top talent in the new hybrid work environment.

The COVID-19 pandemic upended the workplace and freed employees to work securely from home. This liberation from the daily grind has resulted in increased productivity, better work/life balance, and savings for employees and corporations. The benefits are so great that major corporations have announced plans to offer the perk of a hybrid work environment — one where employees work in a remote/in-office combination.

Read this guide to find out how your business can retool and reimagine your current legacy system to support an exponential amount of users, devices, and locations.

Get the Guide

Customer Success Stories

Black Box works with clients around the globe to address the unique challenges of edge network transformation, including these impressive success stories:

customer-success-story_food-manufacturing_220x147

Manufacturer’s Network Optimization Saves $3M

A large food manufacturer turned to Black Box for help optimizing its network, upgrading its unified communications system, and supporting them after installation. The result was enhanced security and efficiency that lead to a projected savings of approximately $3 million.

customer-success-story_airport_220x147

Airport Foils Ransomware Attack

A large, North American, international airport, decided not to pay on a ransomware attack. Instead, they turned to Black Box. Our experts isolated the “infection,” procured new equipment, rebuilt the network, and reinstalled data from backups. The resulting value totaled over $2 million. Read Full Case Study.

customer-success-story_hospital

Hospital’s HIPAA Maintained Remotely At $1.2M Value

A Top 5 North American hospital network turned to Black Box to provide employees with secure, HIPAA-compliant remote access via cloud management. Results included potential reallocated hospital space, lower business risk, additional remote work opportunities, and a $1.2 million recognized value for investment in security devices. Read Full Case Study.

customer-success-story_municipality_220x147

Municipality Adds Secure, Remote Access; Gains $1.1M In Productivity

During the lockdown, a Northeast municipality employees couldn’t access files and applications remotely due to the absence of security features. Black Box provided a security platform that protected access to data for all users, devices, and applications. The result was a $1.1 million gain in productivity — plus millions saved by thwarting security breaches and ransomware attacks.

customerstory_sdwan_healthcarecons_220x147

Centralize 300+ Disparate Healthcare Networks

A growing healthcare consortium needed to simplify and consolidate 300+ homegrown field office networks for manageability, agility, and HIPAA compliancy. By leveraging Black Box's expertise and national service teams, they received a centrally managed, integrated SD-WAN network that mitigated risk, met all HIPAA requirements, and guaranteed 99.999% uptime. Read Full Case Study.

custstory_miamidade_220x147

Pandemic-Safe NOC for Miami Airport

When the pandemic hit, the Black Box team faced the daunting challenge of how to quickly transition Service-Desk Agents to a remote and socially distanced work environment, yet continue to provide mission-critical network and communications services with no disruption for the Miami International Airport. The team seamlessly cut over to a customized cloud-based solution and realized significant annual cost savings and a major reduction in call waiting and queue times. Read the full case study.

Why Black Box?

For almost 45 years, Black Box has helped clients in all industries and locations around the globe build, secure, manage, reimagine, and transform their networks and IT infrastructure.

Thanks to partnerships with leading manufacturers in digital communication and infrastructure, Black Box can help you shape a consumption model that will revolutionize your work ecosystem — and give your employees the flexibility to collaborate securely and intuitively anywhere, anytime, on any device.

So whether you’re a large healthcare enterprise or retailer, a small manufacturer, or somewhere in between, Black Box’s 2,500 team members have the know-how to help you engineer business continuity and innovation.

Business Resiliency and Digital Transformation

What does the modern workforce look like? Gain new insight and understanding from our Edge Networking experts as they help you make sense of secure hybrid work models, the post-pandemic office environment, and fluid business operation.

Built for Speed: What You Need to Know About Wi-Fi 6

Aug 27, 2019 | Black Box Corporation

Wi-Fi 6 is coming and is generating a lot of hype. In this first of two posts on Wi-Fi 6, we’ll take a look at what Wi-Fi 6 is and why it’s going to be a real game changer for wireless connectivity.

The Name Change

First, what is Wi-Fi 6? Was there ever a Wi-Fi 5? To make the standard easier to remember than the alphabet soup of letters and numbers, the Wi-Fi Alliance has named the IEEE 802.11ax standard Wi-Fi 6. Similar to the different generations of cellular networking technology (3G, 4G, and 5G) the Alliance is renaming the standards to reflect different generations of wireless technology.

Keep in mind that Wi-Fi 6 is different than 5G. Wi-Fi 6 is a wireless LAN technology designed for offices and public spaces. 5G is a WAN technology designed to carry cellular data. In most places, Wi-Fi 6 and 5G will coexist. You may use one or the other or a combination of both depending on your application, industry, and location.

Wi-Fi Generation	IEEE Standard	Speed
Wi-Fi 6	802.11ax	10-Gbps
Wi-Fi 5	802.11ac	2167 Mbps
Wi-Fi 4	802.11n	300-600 Mbps
Wi-Fi 3	802.11a, g	54 Mbps
Wi-Fi 2	802.11b	11 Mbps
Wi-Fi 1	802.11a	1–2 Mbps

Why is Wi-Fi 6 a Game Changer?

So why is Wi-Fi 6 better? As you can see from the above chart above, Wi-Fi 6 is significantly faster, anywhere from four to ten times faster than its predecessor, Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac.) It’s designed to solve wireless connectivity problems (range, coverage, capacity, dead spots) that its older relatives couldn’t address technologically, particularly in in high-density edge environments such as office buildings, conference halls, transportation hubs, sports venues, and more. What really makes Wi-Fi 6 different is that it will be able to accommodate large number of users and IoT devices accessing the network simultaneously.

Here’s an analogy. Think about going to a professional sports game. Before the game, you have no trouble accessing the internet, even though you’re in a stadium with thousands of other users. But, they’re not all online at the same time. Then the big play happens and suddenly you, and everyone else, is trying to get online to tweet, post, text and otherwise share the news with friends not lucky enough to snag a ticket to the game. The result? Spinning and more spinning. Frustrated you give up. Wi-Fi 6 will end the frustration.

Here’s another game changing analogy. Imagine you’re standing in line at the concession counter and there’s only one cashier who can only serve one person at a time, sort of like older 802.11 APs. Everyone has to wait their turn. But now imagine your cashier is a Wi-Fi 6 AP. Everyone in line would be placing orders and getting served at the same time, even the people in the back of the line. No wait. No frustration.

So in summary, Wi-Fi 6 is:

Fast! Wi-Fi 6 is 3x–10x faster
Designed for crowds with simultaneous uploads/downloads

Part Two

In part two of this post, we’ll take a more in-depth look at what Wi-Fi 6 is and the technology that makes it work, particularly in the areas of reduced latency, improved throughput, reduced power consumption, and better IoT operability.

If you’re thinking about your mobile-first strategy, talk to Black Box now. We can help you make mobility happen with the right intelligent edge foundational technology including DAS, small cells, CBRS, two-way radio as well as Wi-Fi. When you enable mobility, you enable connectivity at the digital edge.

Learn more at blackbox.com/Mobility

Learn more about all the IEEE 802.11 standards here.

If you would like to receive our quarterly newsletter, View from the Edge, you can sign up here.