Tony Froelich | FIBERTOWN BLOG

Ready for Severe Weather: Business Continuity is Key

In the face of fierce weather, it’s vital that your business can adapt quickly to whatever challenges are thrown your way.

Extreme weather like Winter Storm Uri and hurricanes like Harvey and Ike have shown us that business as usual must also include contingency plans for disasters.

Business resilience may sound like another buzzword for the boardroom, but being able to continue day-to-day operations during a disaster plays a major role in customer satisfaction, retention and reputation.

Prepare your business for challenges

FIBERTOWN data centers coupled with disaster recovery and business continuity office space provide peace of mind when urgent situations strike.

Communicating with employees and customers during disruptions is critical.

To ensure operations and functions through uncertain times, our concurrent and redundant data centers prevent downtime to maintain connectivity and productivity.

“Mature organizations understand the practicality and even necessity of a remote, high-availability operational workspace — for training in quiet times and guaranteed access in times of uncertainty.”

Unique features of FIBERTOWN data centers and office space
Offering dedicated disaster recovery office space with Dark Fiber connected to the data center, FIBERTOWN has prepared facilities ready for customers at a moment’s notice.

Your business enjoys 100% uptime for power, cooling, networks, and security, to ensure business operations and to enable and deploy remote workforces.

FIBERTOWN provides the latest technology and connectivity to multiple carriers.

Mission-critical operations like the Combined Emergency Operations Center (CEOC) for Brazos County, the Cities of Bryan and College Station, and Texas A&M, and Brazos Valley 911, in addition to petroleum pipeline control operations and hospital systems, count on us for 100% uptime for data systems, as well as private, secure, high-availability business continuity office suites.

Ready for this year’s hurricane season

At FIBERTOWN, we help companies address two key factors: maintaining the availability of your critical technical systems and work area recovery space.

Our trusted service team is also available to be your remote hands and eyes to help during times of disaster or pandemic.

Call us today, and gain peace of mind knowing you can handle any disaster that comes your way.

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5 Top Reasons to Use On-Site Service from Data Centers

At FIBERTOWN, we offer our colocation clients a service we call our “hands and eyes” support.

Clients often utilize this service during natural disasters, like Hurricane Harvey and Winter Storm Uri, but we also offered significant support during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Here are the top 5 reasons our customers continue to ask for on-site service from our 24/7 tech staff.

Reason #1: Better use of time and budgeting

If your business is located in Texas, you may have come on-site to one of our data centers to set up your IT equipment or move it from your previous environment.

But when you have something like a hardware reboot — the simple turning off and on of hardware to reset the equipment and get it back online — is it really your best use of time to drive or fly to our data center to do it yourself?

The best business acumen will say budgeting for that short trip doesn’t make fiscal sense. It’s better to utilize the expert on-site FIBERTOWN staff to handle the in-person fixes.

You can also ship your hard drives or devices to FIBERTOWN data centers, and we can install them for you. Save your tech the trip.

Reason #2: We take care of the repetitive tasks

In an IT environment, small changes that need to happen for hardware aren’t always difficult — but they are necessary.

For example, tasks like labeling or racking devices — placing devices into cabinets, plugging in power and connective cords are important. They must be done correctly and accurately, but not necessarily by your own personal techs.

These are great tasks to hand off to our hands and eyes team.

Reason #3: Cheaper than sending IT staff to fix

Troubleshooting is always going to be part of the IT daily tasks.

Whether it’s a new configuration or devices, testing and fixing are just part of the business process.

If you need someone to console or plug into devices, discover what errors the device is showing, and work with your team on fixes — we have the skilled staff to handle it.

Instead of sending your own team, or hiring a third party, you can rely on the 24/7/365 staff that knows the ins and outs of our data center environment and can get you back on track quickly.

It’s a simple way to save money on your bottom line.

Reason #4: Convenience

When you’re in the middle of the workday, canceling meetings and interrupting the flow of your day to make your way to your data center is a hassle.

Convenience is key.

You can rely on the FIBERTOWN staff to help you with those on-site swaps that need to happen for your IT department.

We can help swap bad memory or hard drives to avoid excessive downtime.

Or, we’re able to reterminate or relocate cabling. Direct our staff to swap out bad cables or move cables to different ports or different devices, and we’ll get it done for you quickly.

Reason #5: Gives your staff time to focus on higher-level tasks

Being able to see the long-term vision for your IT staff is vitally important.

Every team has concurrent projects that have solid deadlines.

Giving your staff the time they need to focus on those higher-level tasks keeps projects on time and staff on point.

For customers who have a lot of data storage needs, we can handle tape rotations, store tapes on site, or pack up tapes to ship to off-site storage.

Prepared for the 2021-22 hurricane season

At FIBERTOWN, we help companies address two key factors: maintaining the availability of your critical technical systems and work area recovery space.

Customers look to FIBERTOWN and our team of disaster recovery experts to maintain 100% up-time.

Our hands and eyes service is just one way we continue to help our clients when they need it most.

Call us today, and gain peace of mind knowing you can handle any disaster that comes your way.

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Relying on Best Practices for Security

Proper security practices are a vital part of company infrastructure.

As we know, ransomware has quickly emerged as one of the fastest-growing cyber threats to both businesses and government agencies alike.

The May 7, 2021 cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline shuttered the computerized equipment managing the gasoline and jet fuel delivery pipeline. The resulting shutdown spread fear across the southeastern U.S., as consumers rushed the pumps and drove up prices.

Hackers demanded almost $4.4 million in Bitcoin for ransom, which the company quickly paid while working closely with the FBI. Most of the money was later recovered.

After reviews by industry security experts, a simple multi-factor authentication (MFA) would have been enough to stop hackers from accessing Colonial Pipeline credentials.

Is a review of your company’s security practices on the annual calendar?

Reducing the risk of ransomware attacks

If you’re concerned about the level of security in your own firm, including physical and cybersecurity, VPN, and off-site access to critical systems, you might want to consider choosing a data center for your storage.

In order to keep your data safe, FIBERTOWN uses layers of security controls and system checks built into the structure of our data centers.

From the building to the software systems and personnel, we use a multi-pronged approach to physical and digital security.

Important measures we take include: construction materials that ensure hurricane resistance, our 24/7 network operations staff and on-site security, and a 100% uptime service level agreement to provide redundant power and cooling.

It’s important to find a data center that knows the risks of ransomware and has the highest levels of security in place to mitigate possible breaches.

FIBERTOWN partners with many cybersecurity companies who offer excellent products and services. For more education, we engage FBI cybersecurity experts to speak at FIBERTOWN-hosted events to give advice on the latest real-life examples they have seen. If you would like a recommendation, or to sign up for our next cybersecurity event, please ask.

Assistance with backup and disaster recovery

At FIBERTOWN, we want to help make digital security less of an issue for customers.

Energy companies depend on FIBERTOWN for their colocation and backup needs.

Take Petrobras America Inc. for example.

Petrobras America Inc. is a subsidiary of Petrobras, an energy company comprising upstream and downstream operations in Brazil and a North America trading group.

Their data center was located in an office building not set up for the special considerations an enterprise-level data center requires like generator power, cooling, and multiple carriers.

The building would lose power multiple times per month, and enduring the outages was taxing and stressful for the IT team.

Realizing data center operations were not core to their business, the IT team concluded that hosting data at a remote colocation center would provide better return on investment.

Fibertown offered a certified data center with redundancy, multiple carriers, and disaster recovery features (like being first in line for diesel for backup generators) that inspired confidence in the Petrobras America Inc. team.

Prepared for hurricane season

The very best disaster recovery and business continuity plan is the one you never have to use.

The worst? Not having one at all.

What disaster recovery or business continuity means to your business depends on many complex or unpredictable factors.

At FIBERTOWN, we help companies address two key factors: maintaining the availability of your critical technical systems and work area recovery space.

Our customers look to FIBERTOWN and our team of disaster recovery experts to maintain 100% up-time.

Call us today, and gain peace of mind knowing you can handle any disaster that comes your way.

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A Colocation Story: Centennial Arts

Exceptional customer service helps Centennial Arts transition to FIBERTOWN’S colocation services within 24 hours during Winter Storm Uri

As a website design and development firm in Bryan, Texas, it’s vital for Centennial Arts to provide consistent hosting services.

But Winter Storm Uri in February 2021 had other plans for them.

Due to the State of Texas’ electrical grid overload, Centennial Arts’ backup power solutions were affected. Rolling blackouts kept happening.

Because Centennial Arts was located in a high-power consumption facility, the utility company decided to cut off the power until they could figure out what to do from there.

Once that decision was made, backup power kicked on for Centennial Arts, and they started going through their batteries. Then a generator failed, and something else happened with the transfer switch.

The Centennial Arts team was looking for alternative options to avoid downtime during the chaos of the winter weather. The utility company couldn’t promise a restoration date or even consistent backup power.

Extraordinary customer service helps Centennial Arts quickly

Once Centennial Arts contacted FIBERTOWN to ask about colocation services, the sales representative was very helpful and offered server space on the spot.

FIBERTOWN was ready to keep Centennial Arts’ services running if they wanted to migrate hardware that same day.

“While we were dealing with multiple factors like icy conditions and the logistics of how to migrate, the FIBERTOWN team was very helpful during a stressful time,” said Alfred Hanna, Centennial Arts CMO.

The on-site FIBERTOWN team was ready at the data center and already had a section prepared for Centennial Arts.

As they started moving equipment on-site and setting up the infrastructure, FIBERTOWN staff were on hand for any questions, calls, tools, or an extra set of hands to help set up.

Within 24 hours of initial contact, FIBERTOWN was able to help a customer move into the data center during a natural disaster.

When customers need emergency help, FIBERTOWN will go the extra mile to get them in and set up.

A smooth migration process reassures Centennial Arts

“FIBERTOWN made the migration, and our backup, a lot easier to set up very quickly in one day. They were very responsive and very helpful. They just made things happen,” remarked Hanna.

The team worked continuously to transition to a zero downtime electrical grid with reserve generators and UPS systems.

After days of unstable power, Centennial Arts could now tell their customers not to worry about any more power or weather service interruptions.

Winter Storm Uri caused many headaches for many companies.

But for Centennial Arts, the nimble work of FIBERTOWN helped keep them up and running.

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FIBERTOWN offers colocation data centers, disaster recovery and business continuity office space. Texas owned and operated since 1997, FIBERTOWN maintains data centers with concurrent and redundant power, cooling and connectivity, as well as disaster recovery offices and SCADA control centers, in north Houston and Bryan, Texas.