These days, companies in Santa Maria depend on reliable access to The Internet as the lifeblood of their company. Fast and reliable Internet access is needed for businesses to function properly; large corporations and small companies alike.
In the months and years ahead, people and businesses will become more reliant on internet access.
From email messaging to information sharing, e-commerce to archiving data, and voice over IP to video conferencing, the internet is omnipresent. How can your needs be met? Perhaps a cable modem is all you need. Maybe you need Metro Ethernet. Your needs may be met with Gigabit Internet. Will your Santa Maria, California organization needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg access to The net or 100 Meg access to The net point?
Before selecting an appropriate service for your organization, you must first determine what needs you are trying to satisfy. Is the internet primarily used for emailing or web surfing? Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? Are you hosting the data in Santa Maria and distant locations or offices rely on you?
What if there is an outage and your high-speed Internet is interrupted? How might the downtime cause problems for your business? Is uptime required? Before you buy anything, you must answer these questions.
In all-encompassing terms, businesses need high-speed Internet access. You need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits to your company before choosing the right broadband internet. While various providers will throw around terminology like:
… do not stray from the real issues. Focus on what your company’s needs are and what capabilities and technical solutions will help satisfy them.
Companies in Santa Maria need access to the web for their employees. Some companies may need it only for a few people and others may need it for the entire workforce. The Internet is required for so many things, whether to order items, look up company information talk to third parties.
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. You should consider more than that if you have more workers. Also keep in mind whether your workers need to access the net at the same time.
High-speed Internet may become less important if the majority of your employees primarily use an intranet system with limited graphics and video. If your organization functions demand the downloading of documents and images or videos on a regular basis, speed becomes a must more important issue.
Does your business regularly conduct backups? It is recommended that you do remote backups from every desk. If you are, you will need to support simultaneous connections out to the web to synchronize the backup data to collect.
Do you use a file sharing service like Google drive or DropBox? The saved files go to the cloud and are then synchronized or “shared” with other people’s computers. Running all your services properly, including sharing files, requires that you have the right amount of bandwidth.
Depending on where you are, you may want to look into high-speed organization access to The web such as Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet. These can usually be found in Santa Maria in “lit buildings” that have already been wired. You may be surprised by how easy and affordable it is to add high-speed Internet to your business.
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. You can actually get high-speed access with gigabit Internet or even Metro Ethernet quickly. It often takes only 30 days or less, depending on availability.
Consider whether your business hosts its own servers that run APIs, websites and/or data to outside buildings, offices or companies. Maybe your company requires that dozens of satellite offices have access to a hosted application at your company main headquarters. Perhaps you are in retail and host the point of sale (POS) system for thousands of stores? Are you a law firm? Do you host data for three or more external places?
When things are hosted at a central point, parties outside the office must somehow gain access. Those people are not able to do their work if the net connection fails or is unreliable. When deciding on the right intranet solution for your business, ask yourself: Is the solution going to adequately support simultaneous and multiple connections from my different places?
An inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be enough if you have one office that needs to surf the web. A cable modem may also be adequate in this situation. Company headquarters should have high-speed access to The Internet such as gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit. Multiple diverse connections require support, in addition to high speed. A cable modem would likely not provide the necessary support.
Bringing in a less-expensive circuit like a cable modem often comes with a price. Even though you pay less money per month you must consider that the bandwidth you receive may be shared and used by multiple parties in the building. 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. Often, within a given community, cable companies may only deliver a particular amount of bandwidth. Whatever that amount of bandwidth is, it branches into all buildings in the community and to all tenants in those buildings. Will you achieve 30-meg speed during the working day? Is this a problem for you if you expect 30 and get 6?
There are providers who offer dedicated and even guaranteed bandwidth. With these options, bandwidth is yours. It is not shared with anyone outside of your organization. Notwithstanding the existence of tenants, offices or buildings in the area, you should have the full capability of your circuits at all times.
For example, Metro Ethernet guarantees bandwidth in 5 met circuits, 10 Meg circuits, 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 carriers divide their circuit to various tenants while guaranteeing that everyone gets their contracted speed.
Circuits can go down in Santa Maria even though certain providers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. How can you lower the chances that you will experience some kind of outage?
You may be a candidate for redundant circuits.
Essentially, there are two different ways to look at redundancy.
A single carrier, providing multiple circuits, to one customer, characterizes one form of redundancy. Redundant circuits can help protect against certain problems. They can mitigate the inconveniences when there is a failure of a physical line or a problem with the port into your router. If that carrier has a wide reaching outage or there is a line broken or damaged outside of your building, both circuits may go down. While offering some protection, it is not without risk.
You can also achieve redundancy by utilizing different carriers to bring in and establish your circuits. 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. Though they may appear as one, you know that they are each individual circuits 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.
You want maximum redundancy. In order to achieve this, look for redundant circuits from different providers with different physical geographic pathways in Santa Maria. Your goal should be to get circuits coming into your building on different sides. You do not want them on the same side. The circuits would be established either underground or on telephone poles and would be set up in different directions and lead to different offices. 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.
Internet access costs money but the cost of NOT having reliable Internet access is greater. Contemplate these situations:
Your organization is on a cable modem and your carrier provides circuits to 20 other offices in your 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 available bandwidth shrinks, what will happen to your calls? How will the quality of that phone call be affected? Will calls be cut-off? 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 places, you may have 2, you may have 500, you may have 4, 000, count on your main Internet connection to access and receive data. If your circuit goes done, what happens next? Is it just irritating? Is it going to cause tremendous problems? Are your other offices able to do any work? Process new orders? Circulate necessary data? Before choosing a solution, be sure to assess and really understand what your organization requires. You have a software company, and are running a hosted solution for dozens, maybe hundreds, of customers. Is an API utilized in your company so that your customers can access and speak with your system? It is possible they will not be able to connect to your servers. Will your customers remain loyal to you if they have to withstand multiple outages?
Maybe your business depends entirely on the internet. 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. You are essentially out of company. Is redundancy enough? Are you really getting the dependable service you need form your providers? Are you using providers that are truly reliable? You should be getting high quality service that ensures your calls are consistently clear and reliable.
You clearly have several choices. Your decision will be based on different factors including your company needs and your budget. As a high-level summary:
If your organization is small, with one location or office, you are likely not concerned about redundancy. For you, a single 5, 10 or 50 megabyte access to The web circuit may suffice. 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. The availability of circuits and your location determine prices; speak with one of our engineers to learn what your best options are.
You have a midsized company in Santa Maria; you will surely need higher-speed Internet. Higher-speed circuits like Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or others may be your best options. Ideally, multiple circuits from multiple providers will provide you with the greatest redundancy. But can you do this without doubling costs? Sometimes, yes. Two smaller circuits may be cheaper than one. For instance, you may use two 50 meg circuits instead of a single 100 meg circuit. To repeat, availability and prices vary. Learn your options by speaking with one of our knowledgeable experts. We can help you determine what is available in your specific location.
Any company with more than one location suffers the greatest risk of problems. Redundant circuits are essential. Multiple providers or providers are recommended. Additionally, you should consider redundant equipment (routers and switches) in your facility to minimize the risk of downtime. 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. The right combination of services and carriers can positively impact the efficiency of your company.
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. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed uptime. You need enough bandwidth. The bandwidth must be adequate to handle spikes in usage with no 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.
The danger and risk of failing circuits is tremendous. So is the risk of having less bandwidth than you need. Your ideal single circuit or multiple circuits should stay within your budget while still meeting your demands. There is tremendous pressure on you to choose the best combination of circuits and hardware.
Our engineers will take the pressure off and develop a free action plan for you by analyzing your needs. You want your organization to run smoothly. We’ll look at your current usage levels and demand levels and design a plan that meets your needs at a cost that makes sense for you.
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