In today’s environment, companies in Miami rely on reliable Internet access as the lifeblood of their organization. The company functions of all companies, from Fortune 500 to small businesses, rely on fast and reliable Internet access.
We are going to become increasingly reliant on Internet access as the months and years progress.
From email messaging to information sharing, e-commerce to archiving data, and voice over IP to video chat, the internet is omnipresent. What do you need? Perhaps a cable modem is all you need. Metro Ethernet may be what you need. Gigabit Internet? A 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg Internet access, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The Internet point: what is right for your organization in Miami, Florida?
Before choosing an adequate or appropriate service, you must decide what your organization really needs. Is the web primarily used for emailing or web surfing? Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? Are you hosting data in Miami, Florida? Do remote places rely upon you?
What happens if you have an outage in your high-speed Internet? Can your company afford a long pause or lull in productivity? Is your success reliant on uptime? These types of questions must be answered before you make purchase anything.
High-speed Internet access is required by all businesses. Choosing the correct broadband for your company requires a cost benefit analysis. While many service providers throw around terminologies such as:
… the actual issue is knowing what technology and capability can satisfy your needs.
For many, if not all, companies in Miami, Florida, access to The Internet is needed for at least some employees. It may be needed for company research, to order office supplies or other reasons.
Perhaps the size of your work force may determine the solution that best fits your needs. If you have a smaller workforce, you may do fine with a smaller Internet circuit. For example, if you only employ a handful of people, a 5 or 10 Meg circuit may meet your needs. If you have many employees who need to use the internet at the same time, you may do better with more.
Your need for high-speed Internet may be lessened if your workers are just accessing an intranet systemOn the other hand, if your company requires that its employees download many documents or images and videos, Internet speed becomes more important.
Are you regularly performing backups? You may need to support simultaneous connections to the web in order to sync your backup data. If you conduct remote backups from every workstation, which is advisable, this will be important.
Does your company require employees to share files using a service like Google drive or DropBox? As people save files, those files are pushed to the cloud and then synchronized back to other people’s computers. You need to have sufficient bandwidth to support this function while also supporting every other service.
Are you interested in high-speed company Internet? Depending on where you are located, you may want to look into the viability of gigabit Internet and Metro Ethernet. These can usually be found in Miami in “lit buildings” that have already been wired. The ease and affordability of adding high-speed Internet to your office may surprise you.
The introduction of Metro Ethernet into a new building can be quite costly. However, bringing that connection into office space within that building is usually less so. Did you know that obtaining high-speed access to The web with Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet can often take 30 days or less? Of course, this 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? Are your corporate headquarters with a hosted application utilized by 50 branch offices? Is your company retail? Do you have thousands of stores? Do you host the point of sale system for the entire chain? You may be a law firm hosting data for three or four different offices.
If your company hosts its programs and information at a central location, people outside of that location need to have access in order to conduct organization. If the net connection is interrupted or fails, those people are unable to accomplish any work. Make sure that when you choose your intranet solution it is reliable enough to support your need for multiple and simultaneous connections for many different places.
If you have one office using the web, you may get by with a cable modem or a low- cost 10-megabyte circuit. High-speed dedicated circuits, Metro Ethernet or gigabit Ethernet are advisable for company headquarters. High-speed alone is not enough. They must also need to be capable of supporting many diverse connections. Do you think a cable modem is sufficient? It is probably not.
In many scenarios, bringing in an inexpensive circuit, such as a cable modem, comes at a price. You may have to share bandwidth in order to secure that low monthly rate. You may experience slow downs. For example, although you subscribe to a cable modem with a thirty Meg connection, it can be difficult to maintain the maximum speed during busy times and peak hours. Often, within a given community, cable companies may only deliver a particular amount of bandwidth. That bandwidth branches off to different buildings and then to various tenants within those buildings. While you may be capped at a 30 Meg speed, you may never be able to reach that speed during business hours. What will the consequences be if you expect 30 but only get half that? What if you get even less?
There are providers who offer dedicated and even guaranteed bandwidth. With these, bandwidth belongs to you and your business only; no sharing. The presence of numerous buildings and tenants should have no effect on your speed. You should receive full capacity of your circuits no matter what the time of day.
As an example, look at Metro Ethernet. They provide guaranteed bandwidth in various increments. You can receive guaranteed bandwidth in increments of 100, 50, 10 and 5 megabytes. With gigabit Internet providers, you can reach gigabit speeds in your office out to the net.
Here, carriers deliver enough high-speed to the building, so that it can be split among various tenants. The carrier has the right amount so that everyone gets the contracted speed that has been promised.
You can’t control everything. Even with the superior Internet bandwidth products that some carriers offer in Miami, Florida, problems arise and circuits can fail. What can you do to minimize the chance that you will experience an outage of some kind?
Try using redundant circuits.
We are primarily talking about two kinds of redundancy.
The first is where you get multiple circuits from one carrier. This provides some protection when there are certain failures. Multiple circuits can help for example, when there is a physical line issue or a problem with a router port. Even multiple circuits can fail, such as in the event of a large-scale carrier outage or when there damage to an external line. You get some protection, but also some risk.
The other type of redundancy requires you to utilize circuits from different providers. For users and the public, you can make it look like you have one cohesive circuit. You can also make the connections act as a single circuit. You can do this with various advanced routers and IP address allocations. In reality, they are completely separate and redundant to each other. Diversity redundancy provides greater assurance, comfort and protection. When one carrier has a problem like an outage or some other failure, you have another one that works.
For maximum redundancy, you should look for redundant circuits from different carriers with different physical geographic pathways in Miami. In other words, try to obtain circuits entering the building from different sides of the building. The circuits would be attached underground or to telephone poles, in various directions. The circuits would go to different data centers or central offices. If you can accomplish this, you are protected from a major catastrophe. For example, if a there is a fire or some other accident that negatively affects circuits in a region, you have redundancy in a physically different direction.
The cost to your company if you do not have reliable Internet access will be far greater than you may realize. Contemplate these scenarios:
If your company utilizes a cable modem, consider whether your carrier is providing circuits for multiple other tenants within the building. It is possible that during normal business hours, those tenants might be downloading large files or watching continuous videos. They might be getting a lot of phone calls. As the amount of available bandwidth diminishes, what happens to your phone calls? What happens to the quality of that phone call? Will calls be cut-off? Will the calls be choppy?
Your office is the hub of your enterprise: You might be a law practice that shares files, a retail operation that utilizes POS systems or a large accounting firm that needs to share databases. Every single one of your offices, stores and locations rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. How will you be affected if your circuit goes down? Will it cause disastrous results of just annoy you a little bit? Are your other offices able to do any work? What happens to new orders? Can they be taken or processed? Circulate essential files and data? Do you know what your organization needs? Be sure to fully understand your requirements. It will help you choose the correct solution. You have a software company, and are running a hosted solution for dozens, maybe hundreds, of customers. Is an API utilized in your business so that your customers can access and communicate with your system? It is possible they will not be able to connect to your servers. Customers will only take so many repeated outages. How long with they remain with your company?
Your company is 100% reliant on the web to properly function. No outbound calls can be made should your circuits go down. Calls coming in would be unanswerable. You might not even know people are trying to reach your office. Your business is basically done with. While most call centers that are reputable use redundancy, is it enough? Are your current carriers as dependable as you would like? Is the quality of service sufficient for your calls to be clear and reliable?
You clearly have several choices. Your decision will be based on different factors including your business needs and your budget. As a high-level summary:
If you have one location or office and do not feel the need to consider redundancy for your system, a smaller Internet access circuit may be all you need. A single fifty, ten or five megabyte circuit might be enough. Gigabit service and Metro Ethernet options seem expensive. If you are in a lit building, however, they can be less than you think. Look into it. Prices change based on your location and the availability of circuits. Please speak with our engineers about what options best suit your needs.
Mid-sized businesses in Miami, Florida should be equipped with higher-speed Internet. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and other higher-speed Internet circuits are your options. In a perfect scenario, multiple circuits from different providers will give you the most redundancy. You can sometimes achieve this without doubling costs. Using one 100-megabyte circuit instead of two 50-megabyte circuits, is one example. Remember, costs vary. So does availability. In order to find out the options available for you, in your location, you need to speak with one of our seasoned experts.
Businesses with many places face the greatest risk for failure. They require redundant circuits. Different carriers are desirable. Redundant routers, switches and other equipment can also be helpful to lessen downtime during a problem. Before you make a decision here too, do your research. Look closely into Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed circuit providers. Finding the best combination of services, providers and equipment can go a long way toward helping your company run as efficiently as possible.
To run efficiently and effectively, corporations and businesses that fall into this category must use point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits, gigabit Internet circuits and Metro Ethernet circuits. If you want to ensure your valuable uptime, have redundant circuits from multiple providers as well as redundant hardware. Spikes or sudden increase in usage can result in Internet slowdowns or disruptions in service. You can decrease the risk of these events by having sufficient bandwidth. The hardware and circuits you choose must both be able to support the following: a great number of concurrent, speedy connections.
Insufficient bandwidth and failing circuits are present tremendous risk to your company. Your ideal single circuit or multiple circuits should stay within your budget while still meeting your demands. The pressure involved in selecting the proper mix of hardware and circuits can be overwhelming.
Our engineers can analyze your needs and create a free action plan for you. We are going to examine your demand levels and current usage. We are going to then design a plan that keeps your costs reasonable while meeting your demand for a smoothly run organization.
You can complete the contact form on the right side of this page by clicking here. If you would prefer, please call our office to set up an appointment for an assessment. It can take as little as 48 hours to provide a complete assessment.