The lifeblood of Broomfield companies doing company in the current environment depends on reliable access to The Internet. The company functions of every company, whether it is a small business or on the Fortune 500, from Fortune 500, depends on fast and reliable Internet access.
In the months and years ahead, people and businesses will become more reliant on internet access.
The net has a significant presence in our lives. From email to information sharing, data archiving to e-commerce, and VOIP to video chat, the web is certainly ubiquitous. What solution bet fits your needs? Will a cable modem be sufficient? Is Metro Ethernet necessary? Is Gigabit Internet right for you? Does your Broomfield company need a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg access to The net, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg Internet access point?
Prior to selecting a service, your business must figure out its needs. Are surfing the web and sending email the only uses of the web? Is the internet used for real-time data connection with servers in the cloud? Are you hosting the data in Broomfield, Colorado that remote locations rely upon?
What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? Will your organization suffer from the lull? Is your success dependent on uptime? These types of questions must be answered before you make purchase anything.
In the broadest of terms, companies need high-speed Internet access. When picking the correct broadband internet, balancing the costs and benefits to your organization is imperative. While many providers throw around terminologies such as:
… you must not lose sight of the real issue, which is understanding what technical solutions best meet your needs.
For many, if not all, companies in Broomfield, Colorado, Internet access is needed for at least some employees. It may be needed for organization research, to order office supplies or other reasons.
The solution you choose may be based on the number of employees you have or expect to have. A smaller Internet circuit may be enough if you only have a handful of workers. Perhaps a 5 or 10 megabyte is all you need. If you have more than that, you may need more.
If your employees are merely accessing an intranet system with limited graphics and video, your need for high-speed Internet may be reduced. When they are frequently downloading things, whether documents, graphics or videos, however, speed is necessary for efficient job performance.
Are you performing routine backups? If you are doing remote backups from every desk, which is advisable, you will need to be able to support simultaneous connections out to the web to synchronize your backup data.
Are you using Google drive, DropBox or another file sharing service? When you save a file it is pushed to the cloud. Then it is synched to the computer or computers of someone else. In order to ensure that all of your functions work properly, in addition to file sharing, you must have sufficient bandwidth.
You may consider high-speed organization access to The net if you location warrants it. Gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet may be viable options for you. Usually, you can find these in “lit buildings” in Broomfield that have been previously wired by a carrier. You may be surprised by how easy and affordable it is to add high-speed Internet to your organization.
If you have to bring Metro Ethernet into a new building, it can be expensive but bringing that connection to an office or suite within the building is usually not. In fact, in as little as 30 days, you may be able to obtain high-speed access to the web with either gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. It depends upon availability.
Ask yourself this: Does we host our own servers to run APIs, websites and data feeds to external offices or organization premises? Do your headquarters have a hosted Internet application that must be accessed regularly by 40 or 50 branch offices? Are you a retail organization with 10, 000 stores? Do you host the POS system for all of them? Do you run a law office that hosts the data for satellite offices in different cities or states?
Granting access to outsiders is necessary when you host data and programs at a central location. Those people are not able to work without a solid Internet connection. Are you picking an intranet solution that provides reliability and stability for your multiple, simultaneous connections from various locations?
A cost friendly 10 Meg circuit or even a cable modem may satisfy the needs of a company with a single office that needs to surf the web. High-speed Internet access is advisable for the headquarters. Gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit is recommended. While high speed is great, you also need support for your multiple diverse connections. Do you think a cable modem is sufficient? It is probably not.
Utilizing a cable modem or other less expensive circuit may seem like a good option but can result in unexpected cost. Oftentimes, a lower monthly rate comes with the realization that you are sharing bandwidth with many different tenants and offices. The cable modem you subscribe to with the 30 Meg connections may not always reach those speeds, especially during the busiest or “peak” hours of the workday. Many cable companies only deliver a set amount of bandwidth within a community. Buildings, offices and tenants within the buildings all must share that amount of bandwidth, whatever it may be. You might be capped at 30-megabyte speed, but may never be able to actually reach that speed during the important hours of your business day. Is this a problem for you if you expect 30 and get 6?
You can find a carrier who can provide dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this situation, you do not have to share bandwidth. The bandwidth is all yours and is fully allocated to the needs of your company. Regardless of other tenants in your building or neighboring buildings, you should receive the full capacity of your circuit.
With Metro Ethernet, for example, you can receive a guaranteed bandwidth in various increments including 5 and 10 Meg circuits, and 50 and 100 Meg circuits. Gigabit speeds from your office to the web can be reached if you use a gigabit Internet provider.
Carriers in these situations deliver enough to cover everyone’s needs. The providers divide their circuit to various tenants while guaranteeing that everyone gets their contracted speed.
Despite outstanding Internet bandwidth products offered by providers in Broomfield, Colorado, circuits do go down. Ask this question: “what can I do to decrease the likelihood of an outage?
You may be a candidate for redundant circuits.
Redundancy in this situation comes in two forms.
A single carrier, providing multiple circuits, to one customer, characterizes one form of redundancy. Redundant circuits help protect you from certain failures including physical line issues, port issues within routers, and others. However, if that carrier has a greater outage to your entire region or there is a line damaged outside of your office building, you may have both or all circuits go down. You get some protection, but also some risk.
Utilizing circuits from two different providers is the second kind of redundancy. If you think it is beneficial, you can bind the connections together in a manner that makes your circuits act and look like a single source. But, you know that they are actually separate and redundant. While circuit redundancy in general is a good idea, diversity redundancy by using different carriers, offers far better protection. If one carrier has a widespread issue, you have a carrier that will still be alive.
For maximum redundancy, you should look for redundant circuits from different carriers with different physical geographic pathways in Broomfield. Basically this means that you want your circuits to enter your building on different sides or paths. Whether they are attached underground or to a telephone pole, your goal should be to have the circuits in different directions leading to different central places. This way, if there is a major catastrophe, such as a fire at a data center or a major accident impacting circuits within a region, you have redundancy in a different physical direction.
The cost to your company if you do not have reliable Internet access will be far greater than you may realize. Consider these scenarios:
Are you on a cable modem and your carrier is providing circuits to dozens of other office suites in your building? What if any or all of those tenants are huge call centers taking in a massive volume of phone calls, are business that perform large file downloads or stream many videos? How will less available bandwidth affect your telephone calls? What about phone call quality? Are calls lost or dropped? Will you sound muffled or choppy to your customers?
Your office is the center of your business. You may be a law firm that does file sharing or a retailer operating a POS system. Every single one of your offices, stores and sites rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. What if your circuit fails? Would you merely be annoyed? Would there be catastrophic consequences? Is work even possible at your other sites? What happens to new orders? Can they be taken or processed? Share information? Make sure you completely understand your needs before you pick a solution. Perhaps you have hundreds of clients or customers that use a hosted solution that your software company is running. Do you operate a service where other systems speak with yours by using an application program interface (API)? For example do other systems gain access to yours in order to calculate rates, prices, or to collect information that you serve up? What will happen when there is a problem connecting to your servers? Will your customers remain loyal to you if they have to withstand multiple outages?
Your company is entirely Internet based. Your employees or representatives will not be able to make outgoing phone calls if your circuits go down. Calls coming in would be unanswerable. You might not even know people are trying to reach your office. Looks like you are now out of organization. For competent call centers that already use and understand the problems that can arise, is redundancy enough? Are your current providers as dependable as you would like? Is the quality of service sufficient for your calls to be clear and reliable?
You have no shortage of options. Your business budget and needs will play a large part in your decision-making. Essentially:
You are probably not thinking about redundancy if you have a small business with a single location. In this case, you can probably get by with a single access to The net circuit of 5, 10 or 50 meg. If you are in a “lit” building, Metro Ethernet or gigabit service may be reasonably priced options. Speak with our engineers about what is right for you. Prices vary with location and circuit availability.
You have a mid-sized Broomfield company; higher speed access to The Internet required. Your choices include: Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or other high-speed circuits. Using different circuits and different carriers will, if you choose, provide you with redundancy. It is sometimes possible to reach this without adding ridiculous costs. For example, one 100-megabyte circuit may cost more than two smaller 50-megabyte circuits. Do not forget that you will find variations in price and availability. Call one of our experts to learn what is available in your specific area.
If your organization has several places or offices, you are at great risk for failure. Redundant circuits are a necessity. Having several providers would afford extra protection. In addition, consider redundant equipment. Redundant routers and switches can minimize risk also. As always, take a careful look and choose the right Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed Internet access circuit providers. The right combination of services and providers can positively impact the efficiency of your business.
If you fall into this group, you must have Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet circuits and point-to-point High-speed Internet circuits. You must have redundant circuits for multiple providers as well as redundant hardware in your office to ensure your uptime. Having plenty of bandwidth will help avoid interruptions or decreased speed that sometimes occurs during spikes in usage. The hardware and circuits you choose must both be able to support the following: a great number of concurrent, speedy connections.
Do you understand how great the risk of failing circuits and insufficient bandwidth really is? Your ideal single circuit or multiple circuits should stay within your budget while still meeting your demands. It is crucial to choose the correct mix of hardware and circuits. Figuring out exactly what to put in the mix, can be a daunting task.
We have engineers that will analyze your needs, look at your company requirements and develop an action plan for you… for free!We will examine your demand levels and current usage. We will then design a plan that keeps your costs reasonable while meeting your demand for a smoothly run business.
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