In 2016, it’s hard to imagine a world without computer networks. (Go ahead and try it.)
People under 20 have no memory of life without the Internet, smartphones, and interconnected everything. Even some 30-somethings may be hard pressed to remember what the world was like before being online was as natural a state as breathing.
Entire industries would cease to exist without the Internet. Every business disruption of the last 20 years — from Uber and Airbnb to Facebook and Amazon — wouldn’t have occurred without computer networks.
Even smaller businesses rely on networks day in and day out to sell goods, book appointments, answer customer requests, advertise their services, and collaborate with teammates.
Network value is exploding
Clearly, networks have become an indispensable part of life on planet Earth in the 21st century. But just how much is a network worth?

Photo: Pixabay
Consider then the Internet of Things and the massive number of objects that are being connected. By Gartner’s estimates, 5.5 million new objects are added to global networks every day. In a just a few years, nearly 21 billion devices will come online.
Under Metcalfe’s Law, the expansion of the IoT means the value of networks is growing exponentially.
Network downtime is increasingly expensive
Another way to look at the value of a network is to consider the cost when the network goes down. We don’t have to look far for recent examples.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons
In August, Google went down for all of five minutes. And yet in those five minutes, the company lost $545,000 in revenue and Internet traffic dropped by 40 per cent.
True, we’re not all Google and Southwest Airlines. But when you rely on a network to get things done, downtime hurts no matter how big or small the business. The average is $5,600 lost per minute of network downtime.
The network is a change catalyst
Beyond keeping the lights on (sometimes literally), the network is also the key to business success. Any industry breakthroughs we’ll see in the coming years will have digitization at their core.

Photo: Dan Brickley on Flickr
Yet here’s where we start to see problems. “In 2015, businesses spent $12 billion on technology to increase the level of IT agility and evolve into a digital organization. However the network has yet to evolve,” the report says.
“Virtualization, the cloud, mobility and IoT enable … agility—but in most organizations, the network remains as inflexible and static as ever.”
The complexity of modern networks makes them difficult to manage effectively. According to ZK Research, it takes businesses an average of four months to implement network changes. That’s “far too slow for the digital era.” Operational expenses have also grown, increasing 300 percent over the past decade.
Network managers are network champions

Photo: E Fraser on Flickr
Think of it this way: If our planet relies on networks and you manage those networks, you are literally affecting the world. You are champions, doing your part to secure, maintain, and advance the engines that keep everything running.
The network is valuable—and that makes you indispensable.