March Madness Hits Enterprise Networks

Employees in enterprises across the U.S. are expected to be watching the NCAA March Madness Basketball tournament during work hours, with as many as one-third of all employees watching March Madness for three hours or more on Thursday and Friday.

So what should an enterprise IT manager do?

For networking vendor Cisco, the answer is all about managing expectations and bandwidth. Brian Christensen, Director of Enterprise Solutions Engineering and the lead of Cisco’s IT networking services team, explained to Enterprise Networking Planet that simply blocking access is not an option.

“We have a competitive environment for talent in Silicon Valley and we need to support the millennials,” Christensen said. “I view it as critical that we allow the flexibility for people to watch and work.”

In addition to not blocking access to live streaming NCAA March Madness video, Cisco will also likely be putting up the basketball tournament on screens in its break rooms. Christensen stressed though that Cisco will not be encouraging its employees to watch basketball in the break rooms.

“If employees are in a break room it means they aren’t working,” Christensen said. “If you give people Internet capabilities to watch a game while they are at their desks, they’ll still be working.”

Read the full story at EnterpriseNetworkingPlanet:
Is Your Network Ready for March Madness?

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.