These days, companies in Morgan Hill, California count on reliable access to The Internet as the lifeblood of their organization. All companies, from Fortune 500 to small companies, have functions that rely on easy, dependable and quick Internet access.
Our reliance on access to the internet will become greater in the near and distant future.
From email to data sharing, video conferencing to VoIP, and data archiving to Internet commerce, the net is ubiquitous. What solution bet fits your needs? Will a cable modem be sufficient? Metro Ethernet? Gigabit Internet may satisfy your needs. What does your Morgan Hill business need? Does it require 10 Meg Internet access, a 100 Meg Internet access point, a 50 Meg circuit or a 5 Meg circuit?
The needs of your particular organization must be determined before you can select an appropriate service. Why will you need the net? Will you only be web surfing and emailing? Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? Are you hosting data in Morgan Hill? Do remote locations rely on 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 dependent on uptime? You must answer these questions before you buy.
High-speed access to the net is something all companies need. Choosing the correct broadband for your organization requires a cost benefit analysis. You will hear service providers use terms like:
… the real issue is understanding what capability and technical solutions best meet your needs.
At any company in Morgan Hill some employees, if not all employees, need some type of access to the internet if they are to properly perform their job duties. Whether it is for business research, to order supplies or to use third-party applications, the net is required.
Your best course of action may be determined by the size of your work force. If you have a handful of employees, a 5 or 10 Meg Internet circuit may be sufficient. If you have a larger workforce, you may want to consider more. This is especially true if they all need to use the web simultaneously.
Your workforce may simply use an intranet system with limited video and graphics. If this is true, your need for high speed Internet be less than you thought. However, employees who must often download documents, images and videos, need that speed.
Are you regularly performing backups? If, as recommended, you conduct remote backups from every single desk, you will need to support simultaneous connections out to the web. This will allow you to sync your backup data.
Does your company use a file sharing service? DropBox? Google drive? When you save a file it is pushed to the cloud. Then it is synched to the computer or computers of someone else. Supporting file sharing, while supporting every other service, requires sufficient bandwidth.
High-speed company Internet access like Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options for you depending on your location. They are almost always found in “lit buildings” in Morgan Hill that are already wired by a carrier. It may be shock you to know that installing high-speed Internet access may not be particularly expensive or inconvenient.
Unless you are bringing Metro Ethernet into a new building, it does not have to be an expensive proposition to connect it to a suite within a building. Metro Ethernet or gigabit Internet may provide you with high-speed Internet access in thirty days or less, depending on availability.
Does your company host its own servers? Does your company use the hosted servers to run data feeds, APIs or websites for offices or businesses located elsewhere? Are your corporate headquarters with a hosted application utilized by 50 branch offices? Are you a retail chain hosting the POS system for 12, 000 stores? Are you a law firm? Do you host data for three or more external locations?
Access to data and programs by people outside of your main location becomes necessary when you host information centrally. If the web connection is interrupted, those people cannot get their work done. 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.
For one office or a small business with just one or two people surfing the web, a less expensive 10 Meg circuit or a cable modem may meet your needs. Company headquarters should have high-speed Internet access such as gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit. High speed is important but they also must be able to support multiple distinct connections. Do you think a cable modem is sufficient? It is probably not.
Bringing in a less-expensive circuit like a cable modem often comes with a price. There may be a lower monthly rate, but bandwidth is usually shared with many tenants. During peak use hours, you may not be able to reach proper speeds. Many cable operators can only deliver a certain amount of bandwidth in a community. The bandwidth branches off to the multiple buildings, offices and tenants within them. While you may be capped at thirty-megabyte speed, will you ever reach that speed during organization hours? Do you care if you only get 6 when you were set up to expect 30?
Some providers are available who offer dedicated bandwidth and guaranteed bandwidth. In this case, your organization receives full allocation of bandwidth. There is no sharing with any outsiders. 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.
Five Meg, ten Meg, fifty Meg and 100 Meg circuits of guaranteed bandwidth are available with Metro Ethernet. Gigabit speeds from your office to the net can be reached if you use a gigabit Internet provider.
Here, providers 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 providers offer in Morgan Hill, California, problems arise and circuits can fail. The question then becomes, “how do I minimize my chance of an outage? ”
Circuits that are redundant may be a good idea.
Redundancy basically comes in two forms.
A single carrier, providing multiple circuits, to one customer, characterizes one form of redundancy. When there are problems with a physical line or a port or other failures, it can be helpful to have redundant circuits. It is possible for both circuits to go down. If your carrier has a regional problem like a widespread outage, or there is a broken line outside your building, even your redundant circuits may fail. While there is some protection, there is also some risk.
The other type of redundancy requires you to utilize circuits from different providers. Advanced routers and IP address allocations can be utilized to make it look to your users and the public that you have a single circuit. In reality, they are completely separate and redundant to each other. While circuit redundancy in general is a good idea, diversity redundancy by using different carriers, offers far better protection. When one carrier has a problem like an outage or some other failure, you have another one that works.
If you want to maximize redundancy in Morgan Hill, California please consider the following question: Do the carriers I am considering use the same physical geographic pathways? This means that you should try to have the circuits come into you building from different sides. The circuits would be attached to telephone poles (or underground conduits) in different directions leading 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.
Although Internet access comes at a price, the price of unreliable access to The Internet is tremendous. Consider these scenarios:
The carrier you use for your cable modem also provides circuits for a dozen or more tenants in the office building. During your working day, those tenants could be conducting massive downloads of information, processing a large amount of calls or streaming endless video. As they use more bandwidth, there is less for available to meet your requirements. What happens to your phone calls? How will it affect the quality of that telephone call? Will calls be cut-off? Will your voice be inaudible? Will you have difficulty hearing the other end?
You may be an accounting firm that shares databases, a retail chain company utilizing a point of sale system or a law practice sharing files. Regardless of the specifics, your office is the hub for your enterprise. All of your locations, you may have 2, you may have 500, you may have 4, 000, count on your main Internet connection to access and receive data. What happens if your circuit goes down? Would it cause mere annoyance or utter disaster? Is work even possible at your other places? Take new orders? Service existing ones? Circulate essential files and data? It is important that prior to choosing a solution, you understand the true needs and requirements of your particular company. You have a software company, and are running a hosted solution for dozens, maybe hundreds, of customers. Maybe you operate a service that allows other systems to speak with yours via API. This may be to collect miscellaneous data, calculate prices or shipping rates or other information. What if these other systems have difficulty connecting your servers? Multiple outages may annoy your customers.
Your business is entirely Internet based. Should your circuits go down, your representatives cannot make outbound calls. Your reps have no way of answering calls, if they even know they are coming in. Basically, you are done. For competent call centers that already use and understand the problems that can arise, is redundancy enough? Are the providers that you are using reliable enough? Are you getting quality service so that your calls are clear and consistent?
Clearly, there are many choices. Your decision will be based on different factors including your business needs and your budget. Essentially:
A single fifty, ten or five megabyte Internet access circuit may be adequate to meet the needs of your small organization, particularly if you have only one location and are not worried about redundancy. You may find that if your building is “lit”, gigabit service and Metro Ethernet service may be reasonably cost-effective choices for you. Prices vary based on your location and availability of circuits; speak with our engineers to find your best option.
You have a midsized company in Morgan Hill, California; you will surely need higher-speed Internet. Your options are Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet and higher speed circuits. In a perfect scenario, multiple circuits from different providers will give you the most redundancy. You can sometimes achieve this without doubling costs. Two 50-megabyte circuits may be more cost effective than a single 100 circuit. To repeat, availability and prices vary. Call one of our experts to learn what is available in your specific area.
What companies have the highest risk for failure; those with multiple sites. Redundancy is extremely essential to them. Varied providers are optimal. You can decrease risk during downtime by having redundant equipment as well. 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 mix can help. If you can figure out the best combination of providers and services for your company, you will benefit.
Gigabit Internet circuits, point-to-point high-speed Internet circuits are essential and Metro Ethernet Internet circuits must be utilized by companies in any of these categories. You absolutely need redundant circuits from different providers as well as redundant hardware. This is important to ensuring uptime. Having plenty of bandwidth will help avoid interruptions or decreased speed that sometimes occurs during spikes in usage. Your goal is to have hardware and circuits that are more than capable of providing support to a significant number of fast and simultaneous connections.
Insufficient bandwidth and failing circuits are present tremendous risk to your organization. You need to have the right circuit or circuits to meet your demands while staying within your budget. Selecting the appropriate mix of circuits and hardware can overwhelm you.
We have experts to help. Our engineers will do an analysis of your needs and requirements, and develop a free action plan for you based on their findings. We will formulate a design or plan based partly on your current usage and demand levels. We’ll create something cost effective that gives you the resources your business needs, while keeping it running smoothly.
Please complete the contact form by clicking here. You may also call our office to set up an appointment for your assessment. Your assessment may be finished within as little as 48 hours.