Today’s environment demands that companies in Palm Desert, California have reliable Internet service in order to run their business. All companies, from Fortune 500 to small businesses, have functions that rely on easy, dependable and quick Internet access.
In the months and years ahead, people and businesses will become more reliant on access to the net.
The web is ubiquitous. From email to data sharing, archiving to commerce and VOIP to video conferencing, the web is everywhere. What do you need? Will a cable modem be adequate? Metro Ethernet? Would Gigabit Internet suffice? What does your Palm Desert organization need? Does it require 10 Meg Internet access, a 100 Meg access to The web point, a 50 Meg circuit or a 5 Meg circuit?
Before choosing an adequate or appropriate service, you must decide what your business really needs. Are surfing the web and sending email the only uses of the internet? Will real-time data connection with servers in the cloud be the primary use of the net? There may be remote sites that rely on you and you are hosting the data in Palm Desert, California.
What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? How much downtime can your organization withstand? Is the absence of uptime detrimental? You must answer these questions before you buy.
In the broadest of terms, companies need high-speed access to The net. Before you choose your broadband, look at the costs and benefits. Performing this analysis is an important step in picking the right one for your company. While you are likely to hear some service providers toss around terms such as:
… focus on what matters: what does your company need and what are the best services and solutions out there to meet those needs?
For most companies in Palm Desert, some or all of the employees need access to the web. It may be needed for business research, to order office supplies or other reasons.
Your best course of action may be determined by the size of your work force. 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 your organization has nearly 50 people, however, and they all need to use the net at the same time, you may find that more is better.
You may not need as much high-speed Internet access if your employees work primarily on an intranet system with limited graphics and video. On the other hand, Internet speed becomes dramatically more important when they are required to regularly download things like documents or videos.
Does your company regularly conduct backups? Synchronizing your backup data after doing remote backups from every desk requires you to support simultaneous connections out to the web.
Do you use a file sharing 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 must have sufficient bandwidth if you are to successfully support every service including file sharing.
Depending on your location, high-speed company access to The web, including Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options. They are usually contained in “lit buildings” in Palm Desert that have already been wired by a carrier. Adding this high-speed Internet to your office may be surprisingly affordable and easy.
Absent the need to introduce Metro Ethernet into a new building, it is not particularly costly to connect Metro Ethernet to a suite or office within that building. In fact, in as little as 30 days, you may be able to obtain high-speed access to the internet with either gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. It depends upon availability.
Does your business host its own servers running websites, APIs or data feeds for other offices or companies outside of your own four walls? Maybe your company requires that dozens of satellite offices have access to a hosted application at your company main headquarters. Are you a retail company hosting the POS system for thousands of chain stores? Does your legal practice host all of the data for 3, 4 or 5 offices in different sites?
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 business. 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 places?
The needs of an office with one employee web surfing may not need more than a cable modem or an inexpensive 5-10 megabyte circuit. High-speed dedicated circuits, Metro Ethernet or gigabit Ethernet are advisable for company headquarters. While all offer high speeds, they also need to be capable of supporting multiple diverse connections. A cable modem would not be able to accomplish this.
Bringing in a cable modem, which seems to save money, may actually come at a price. You may save money on your monthly bill but the bandwidth you get must be shared among many people. 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. Only a certain amount of bandwidth may be available in a community. Many cable companies have limits on the amount they can deliver. That amount of bandwidth must be shared with different buildings and with the tenants housed within. During crucial working hours, you may not get to the 30-meg speed you have been capped at. If you expect 30 but only get 6, will you have problems?
Other providers do offer dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. With these, bandwidth belongs to you and your company only; no sharing. No matter who is in the building or what buildings surround you, you should always run at full speed.
You can receive guaranteed bandwidth with Metro Ethernet. You can receive it in increments of five, 10, 50 or one hundred megabyte circuits. Gigabit Internet providers offer gigabit speeds from your office to the internet.
In these cases, the providers deliver high-speed to the building in sufficient quantity that they can then split their circuit to various tenants while guaranteeing each tenant is receiving their contracted speeds.
Circuits can go down in Palm Desert, California even though certain carriers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. You must ask yourself: “how do I lessen the chance of an outage? ”
You may be a candidate for redundant circuits.
Essentially, there are two different ways to look at redundancy.
The first kind of redundancy exists when one carrier provides one customer with many circuits. 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. There is some protection that comes with this but there is risk as well.
Bringing in circuits using two distinct providers is the second form of circuit redundancy. These connections can be bound together so they act and appear to the public as a single circuit. Using particular routers and IP address allocations, no one would be able to tell that you have multiple providers or circuits. Though they may appear as one, you know that they are each individual circuits and redundant to each other. This redundancy, referred to as diversity redundancy, offers much greater protection. You will still have a live, fully functioning carrier if one fails.
You want maximum redundancy. In order to achieve this, look for redundant circuits from different providers with different physical geographic pathways in Palm Desert, California. Alternatively stated, try to have your circuits enter the building on different sides from one another. 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 locations. 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. Please consider these situations:
Are you on a cable modem and your carrier is providing circuits to dozens of other office suites in your building? Any of these tenants may be taking many calls, conducting huge downloads or streaming video during your regular office hours. How will your telephone calls be affected as the amount of available bandwidth decreases? What about phone call quality? Are calls dropped? Will your voice be inaudible? Will you have difficulty hearing the other end?
Your office is the hub of your company, whether you are a retail business operating a distributed point of sale (POS) system, an accounting firm sharing databases or a law firm engaged in file sharing. 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 will happen if your circuit crashes? Would it annoy you or destroy you? Is work even possible at your other places? Can they take or process any orders at all? Share essential data? It is important that prior to choosing a solution, you understand the true needs and requirements of your particular company. Perhaps you have hundreds of clients or customers that use a hosted solution that your software company is running. You operate a service that utilizes API in order to grant access to other systems. They may use this to collect whatever data you are offering such as commodity prices, weather data or freight calculations. What if these other systems have difficulty connecting your servers? How will repeated outages affect your customers? Will they remain customers?
Maybe your company depends entirely on the web. No calls can go out if your circuits fail. Your reps have no way of answering calls, if they even know they are coming in. Looks like you are now out of organization. While most reputable call centers are already aware and using redundancy, is it enough? Make sure your providers are as reliable as possible. Is the quality of service sufficient? Are your calls clear and reliable?
You clearly have several choices. Your choices will largely depend on your budget, in addition to the other requirements of your company. In summary:
Sometimes redundancy is not vital to you. For example, If you are a small company, with just one office location, a single access to The web circuit may be sufficient. You may get by with one 50, 10 or even 5 megabyte circuit. You may find that if your building is “lit”, gigabit service and Metro Ethernet service may be reasonably cost-effective choices for you. Costs vary with location and the availability of circuits so speak with our engineers. Together, we can find the best option for you and your business.
Mid sized companies with a single office in Palm Desert, need higher speed access to The net. You may choose between gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet. You may also look into other higher-speed Internet circuits. In a perfect world, you will achieve maximum redundancy by utilizing multiple carriers to provide and service different circuits. This may be attainable without doubling your costs. For example, you may use 2 fifty meg circuits instead of 1 one hundred meg circuit. Remember, costs vary. So does availability. Your specific location will determine what options you have. Please speak with one of our experts to find out what those are and how we can meet your needs.
Companies with multiple sites are most at risk for failure. They require redundant circuits. Multiple providers would be great. Also, redundant equipment such as switches and routers in your facility can minimize the risk of downtime. 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 of providers and services will help keep your business up and running as efficiently as possible.
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. You must have the bandwidth to withstand sharp increases in usage. Doing so will help protect you from slowdowns or interruptions. It is crucial that not only your circuits have the ability to support a vast number of multiple and simultaneous connects, but your hardware must have the ability to support them as well.
Insufficient bandwidth and failing circuits are present tremendous risk to your organization. It is imperative that the circuit or circuits you choose meet your needs but also keep you within your allowable budget. You have to select the optimal combination of hardware and circuits, which is a daunting task.
Our engineers will analyze your needs and requirements and develop a free action plan for you. We will look at your current usage, demand levels and scope out a design to give you the resources you need while keeping your organization up and running at a reasonable cost.
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