“He throws up a prayer — and it’s answered!” Play-by-play announcers are already busy this month making the big calls in the annual “March Madness” NCAA basketball tournament. And that means lots of fun for basketball junkies and bracket-betting fans. But does IT have a prayer of reining in these non-essential uses of network bandwidth? […]
“He throws up a prayer — and it’s answered!”
Play-by-play announcers are already busy this month making the big calls in the annual “March Madness” NCAA basketball tournament. And that means lots of fun for basketball junkies and bracket-betting fans.
But does IT have a prayer of reining in these non-essential uses of network bandwidth? Just as in other big events like the Monday after Superbowl Sunday, or breaking news like Tiger Woods’ apology, March Madness sees many employees rushing to the Web to catch the latest scores, chat on social networks and check out video highlights — productivity be damned.
“March Madness and the subsequent office pools have been going on long enough that employers can no longer claim to be caught off-guard by the annual event,” said John Challenger, CEO of outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, in a recent blog post “Some have tried to squash these pools, most simply ignore them and others have found ways to embrace the tournament as a team-building and morale-boosting opportunity.”
Challenger’s company doesn’t predict the winner of the tournament, but has followed an annual tradition of trying to estimate the tournament’s impact on workplace productivity based on various statistics and surveys detailed in the post.
This year the company estimates workers distracted by March Madness could cost employers as much as $1.8 billion in unproductive wages during the first week of the tournament alone, based on 20 minutes a day watching non-work, tournament-related content on the Web.
The big network providers like Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) and Web security firms offer various solutions to manage and even cut off access to non-work related sites, though the latter is fast-becoming less of an option at many firms.
“Two years ago, many of our customers would look at something like YouTube and their policy would be ‘turn it off,'” Andrew Rubin, CEO of Cymtec Systems, told InternetNews.com. “Now we’re hearing that the things they want to turn off — YouTube, Facebook, Twitter — have to be used for business. You can’t be using YouTube for training videos if you’re not going to let employees use the service.”
Cymtec Systems is attacking what Rubin said is a weak spot in IT control of their network: remote offices. The company offers a network appliance called the Cymtec Sentry for branch offices that’s designed to control and, as Rubin calls it, “shape” bandwidth and access to streaming media. For example, Cymtec Sentry, priced starting at $2,395, can give voice calls higher priority on the network; it also gives network administrators the ability to identify specific bandwidth hogs and warn or restrict those users from using specific sites, whether it’s something sports-related or, say, iTunes.
“What we’re hearing from companies is that their ability to manage the bandwidth and have visibility to smaller, remote offices is important,” said Rubin. “It’s not like we invented network management; many of the products already out there do a heck of a good job. Where we think we add a lot of value is in providing a combination of showing how the network is being used and options for managing the bandwidth.”
For this year, the worst may soon be over as far as bandwidth strains.
“As the tournament moves beyond the first and second round, the impact on the employer decreases, since few games are played during office hours and workers can no longer make adjustments to their brackets, thus eliminating the need to research teams,” Challenger noted in his post, but added that March Madness is a force IT still needs to reckon with.
“Those who insist there will be no impact are kidding themselves. It might be a slight drop in output or it could be slow Internet connections as bandwidth is sapped by employees watching streaming feeds of the games,” he said.
However, he suggested it would be a mistake for companies to institute an outright ban on March Madness viewing. “When many employees are already anxious about their jobs, there is no reason for employers to make a big deal about what amounts to a blip on the productivity radar,” Challenger said.
“The key for companies is finding a way to maximize the positive aspects of March Madness so that they outweigh any potential negatives,” he said. “Companies can use this event as a way to build morale and camaraderie. This could mean putting televisions in the break room, so employees have somewhere to watch the games other than the Internet.”
David Needle is the West Coast bureau chief at InternetNews.com, the news service of , the network for technology professionals.
Ethics and Artificial Intelligence: Driving Greater Equality
FEATURE | By James Maguire,
December 16, 2020
AI vs. Machine Learning vs. Deep Learning
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
December 11, 2020
Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
December 04, 2020
Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 18, 2020
Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA
FEATURE | By Guest Author,
November 10, 2020
FEATURE | By Samuel Greengard,
November 05, 2020
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 02, 2020
How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 29, 2020
Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 23, 2020
The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
October 16, 2020
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
October 07, 2020
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
October 05, 2020
CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science
FEATURE | By Guest Author,
September 25, 2020
Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 25, 2020
Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2021
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
September 22, 2020
NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
September 18, 2020
Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 14, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 13, 2020
IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 11, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality
FEATURE | By James Maguire,
September 09, 2020
David Needle is a veteran technology reporter based in Silicon Valley. He covers mobile, big data, customer experience, and social media, among other topics. He was formerly news editor at Infoworld, editor of Computer Currents and TabTimes, and West Coast bureau chief for both InformationWeek and Internet.com.
Datamation is the leading industry resource for B2B data professionals and technology buyers. Datamation's focus is on providing insight into the latest trends and innovation in AI, data security, big data, and more, along with in-depth product recommendations and comparisons. More than 1.7M users gain insight and guidance from Datamation every year.
Property of TechnologyAdvice. © 2025 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved
Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.
