The global economy is changing the way companies do business. And a networked world throws open the door to opportunity on a scale that was previously unimaginable. For IT and enterprise architects, it increasingly means that the tradeoff between decentralized and innovative or centralized and efficient has disappeared. Now, offices and partners located on different continents can participate as one team in the business more effectively than ever before:

• Collaboration on a global scale requires an advanced network–a common infrastructure that accommodates the security, reliability, and availability needs of a nonstop business
• Companies today can create a collaborative enterprise, in which multiple offices and people function as a single team while still retaining their autonomy
• By adopting a concept called smartsourcing, you can blend resources from a network of worldwide entities–internal offices or external resources, as appropriate–for any given customer offering

Build a global network infrastructure that will deliver real-time communication; one that will help you embrace innovation no matter where it blossoms in your business. When collaborative innovation is built into the network foundation, the opportunities for growth and efficiency increase as well.