Why is the right connectivity at your data center so important?
The adoption of cloud based and hybrid environments have data centers changing their strategy. Recently both Verizon and CenturyLink sold off portions of their data center business. With the rise of companies like Amazon Web Services, data centers are looking for other ways to add value to their customer. Data Center alternative bandwidth and connectivity, including diverse paths and points of entry is crucial.
Most data centers are now selling a cloud environment they built to profit from their additional capacity. Whether traditional a traditional power, ping, and cage or a cloud environment, the right connectivity is crucial.
Some data centers were able to charge a premium for their ability to reduce latency through geographic proximity for certain industries. Today’s customers want to know how much per meg for bandwidth, where’s the nearest IP router, and how many diverse paths do you have? All of these are essential but with all of the carriers available at the data centers, how do you know you’re getting the best price, on the most diverse route, from the provider who actually owns the right to service the wire? After all a 30 year IRU goes on the balance sheet as an asset and you’re in IT not accounting… and certainly not legal.
Some data centers don’t have many options and there are Tiers that regulate diversity in power, bandwidth, cooling, etc. Geography and Right of Ways can dictate a data center’s ability to be diverse. Data Center operators do their best to get the right pricing but a mistake can be crucial, locking them into a price for a long term… Long enough to no longer be competitive and shift with the market’s rates.
It’s my opinion that carrier agnostic data center operators provide the most value to the client. In addition, carriers that build out on spec rather than waiting for orders are typically more progressive and have tools to give them an edge on their opponents who are also selling bandwidth.
Today’s carriers are going as low as twenty-five cents per meg in data centers although some operators are still locked in at rates between $3-7 per meg wholesale. Those rates make solutions like AWS make more sense even though your bandwidth costs in an AWS environment can fluctuate from month to month. When other soft costs like travel to and from the data center and downtime associated with swapping out parts, running cross connects, etc., are factored in, that high bandwidth cost can really alter a company’s strategy.
It’s always helpful after getting your bandwidth turned up, to do a trace route to determine the path redundancy and ensure you get what you ordered. It’s relatively easy to cancel a newly installed circuit in a data center but that’s for a customer. The data center itself will typically eat the cost of construction or guarantee a long enough term for the build out to make sense for the carrier. In my experience that always worked out best when said data center works with its anchor tenant to establish a mutually beneficial arrangements for the customer, carrier, and data center.
Office Move and Cloud Migration Projects
Businessmen packing cardboard boxes in office
IT teams need help when moving or opening new offices. An office move or cloud migration can be quite complex. It’s not like moving your home or apartment. Although that is difficult, moving an office is a concerted effort that makes a personal move pale in comparison. Leveraging your support is imperative. IT teams are the greatest resource companies have today in order to support the office move because moving furniture is easy… Moving tech services is a whole new ball game.
Some of the items to consider are your ISP and phone provider. Using a cloud based UCaaS system makes life easier than a traditional PBX regardless if that’s using SIP, PRI, or even POTS to get to the PSTN for dial tone. PRIs, SIP, and POTS are similar to the problem many customers face with their ISP during a move… They still need to get the wire into your office.
ISPs are not available everywhere. Each has its own unique footprint even down to the floor in the building. Recently, we had two carriers with a site on their LIT building lists that wasn’t actually LIT. Many times providers are only lit to a floor in what we call a homerun shot, leaving them unable to provide service to customers on other floors or offices without a completely new build. What makes this most frustrating for a company during a move is that many times you won’t know this ahead of time. Unfortunately, carriers don’t always keep good records of where their facilities are located. Hence the need for physical site surveys.
There have been countless situations where a company orders from an ISP only to find out weeks later that their order is ‘on hold’. Not every ISP will take an order they can’t fulfil but most will, leaving IT departments with no answer for their C-Level folks when it comes time to explain why their move date won’t be met. When working at ISPs I’ve seen countless situations where sales people struggling to make quota will take an order and have it sit in the system until they can find other companies to sell to in order to get facilities built out. I’ve never met a customer that was happy to be in this situation.
In today’s environment, ISPs are crucial to a business… especially when moving offices. Without internet access employees are stuck twiddling their thumbs and there is little to no productivity. Access to cloud based applications like Salesforce.com or other CRMs, VoIP, and VDI are unavailable without bandwidth. That said, leveraging expertise to ensure a timely and successful move project can be the difference between meeting your date and being in the precarious position of asking a former landlord to extend a lease to an office that, 9 times out of 20, has already been rented to another tenant.
Our value add is a project management system that ties in directly with our carrier’s processes. Whether that’s order entry, credit, IP approval, etc. we know when these items need to be checked off and start moving to the next milestone. Their system’s don’t always follow logic and that which could take place simultaneously only happens sequentially. As savvy as your IT team is, and as much as you may move your office, you don’t do it as often as a company like CloudOgre whose specialty it is to take the heavy lifting out of the IT piece of your move. We will coordinate your ISP, Voice, and Data Center move to allow your IT team to focus on your core business applications and managing users.
Dedicated Internet Access and Cloud Availability in Rural America
Access to solid internet connections are crucial to America’s rural communities. Agriculture is positively impacted by the IoT, helping to enhance nature’s ability to produce more sustainably with less harm to the environment. Economies of these rural communities are positively impacted by the increase in job availability to its residents. Internet access allows remote employees to work from anywhere using VoIP, Salesforce.com, Office 365, etc.
In Western North Carolina’s Polk County, there are very limited options. Windstream is the LEC and Charter the local MSO/cable provider. They don’t provide access everywhere, especially for smaller businesses and residential customers. Some have even taken it upon themselves to petition Charter for service. Fiber optic connectivity is available to larger mid-market companies in the area and the more that they order fiber optics, the more available it becomes to others close by. Pangaea is a non-profit ISP that sees the value in bringing Internet to these communities, and is doing a great job building out their network.
The Tryon Daily Bulletin had an article on October 19th where Keith Conover, the Technical Assistance Director of the NC Department of Commerce stated that there were a lot of options to get broadband in rural areas. While this is true for businesses with larger orders, it isn’t as true for small businesses and residents. That said the more businesses moving to the area ordering and ordering fiber increases the chances to get more access for the rest.
There are very few fiber routes, especially long haul, nearby. Recently, we’ve received quotes from both AT&T and Windstream for fiber optic dedicated internet access in Mill Spring, so it is certainly available for businesses. The article above mentioned requesting Windstream reuse some of its old infrastructure. In reality, the value resides in the Right of Ways, not the infrastructure. It would probably be more cost effective to deploy new fiber optic network, like Pangaea is doing, than to resurrect old infrastructure.
Right of Way and permitting are the long poles in the tent when it comes to building out fiber optic networks and providing service to end users. VoIP can have a huge impact on the revenue requirements to satisfy financial hurdles, however, the FCC does allow carriers in rural areas to restrict number porting, in turn, limiting competition.
Getting better access and competition in rural areas like Polk County North Carolina is a bit of “chicken or the egg” scenario in that we need more businesses to come to the area in order to extend high speed availability while the availability of high speed internet is what will attract businesses to the area. Although I disagree with Keith Conover’s statement that there are a lot of options for residents in the area, the same can’t be said for businesses. They have options and if done correctly can have an impact on their bottom line as well as that of the greater community.
https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/porting-keeping-your-phone-number-when-you-change-providers