Tony Froelich | FIBERTOWN BLOG

FIBERTOWN’s Internet Management and Monitoring Services

We’re frequently asked if we offer internet management and monitoring services outside of our data centers. To this question, we answer a resounding YES!

This article highlights key elements of our internet management and monitoring services outside of our data center. Yes, you read that right. Outside of our data center. We do the tedious, time-sensitive tasks necessary to maintain internet connectivity. (For example, most people hate contacting their internet provider when they lose connectivity. But we don’t mind! And that’s just one perk of these services.)

Keep reading below to learn more. And if you have questions, feel free to complete the contact form so we can answer them.

An Example of Internet Management and Monitoring Services

If you’re unfamiliar with these types of services, here’s a simple example. You’re a growing company with five locations in the U.S. Each location needs bandwidth, and you (or a network engineer or CTO) will have to contract with an internet service provider (ISP) for each of the five sites. Often, ISPs differ throughout U.S. regions so it’s likely not one contract, but multiple ones for your company.

With this model, your various ISP contracts have different start dates, end dates, bandwidth allotments, etc. That’s a lot to juggle!

With FIBERTOWN’s internet management and monitoring services, we do the behind-the-scenes work for your company. We find you the best ISPs and present just one contract to your business.

You don’t worry about start and end dates. We do. You don’t worry about making calls when the internet is down. We do. You don’t chase down credit from your ISP when it fails to uphold your service level agreement (SLA). We do.

Below is more information about these critical components of our internet management and monitoring services.

Shop ISPs on Your Behalf

With 25 years in the data center industry, we’ve developed long-term, healthy relationships with ISPs all over the U.S. (and the world). We leverage those relationships, plus perform in-depth research to find your organization the best ISP for your location. Not only does this save your group a lot of work, but it often saves you money. We always seek the ISPs with the best price without compromising quality.

Hold the Internet Contracts

This element saves your organization so many headaches! It allows for MUCH easier management of contracts including term lengths, speeds, etc. Every detail is on one document for you. And if you have questions, ask us rather than figuring out which site is served by which ISP.

Monitor Internet Bandwidth

No business likes to be without internet! And your teams can’t function long without it either! So, we offer a range of internet monitoring – from a simple ping to full monitoring for flaps or packet loss. We’ll open tickets on your company’s behalf to resolve any internet issues.

And this is the key – You’ll have a human responding and working on any issue within 15 minutes.

FIBERTOWN’s monitoring saves you (or your IT managers) the hassle of waking up at 2 a.m. to submit a help ticket. We can do this because we have multiple network operation centers (NOCs) staffed with professionals to assist you and give you added peace of mind. Anyone can monitor the link and eventually “get around to it.” But if you want a problem addressed quickly, choose FIBERTOWN.

Pursue Credit on Your Behalf if the SLA Isn’t Honored

Truthfully, this is an element of service rarely needed. We strive to contract with upstanding ISPs. But in the unusual case that your SLA is not maintained (which is typically a 95% or 99+% uptime), we’ll work to get your company credit from the ISP for time lost. There’s no back-and-forth between you and the ISP. We handle all of that. And all the credit is passed straight to you!

FIBERTOWN’s Internet Management and Monitoring Services Save You Time, Money, and Headaches

FIBERTOWN developed these services several years ago after clients continued asking for assistance with monitoring and bandwidth – finding ideal providers, managing contracts, and maintaining strong internet connections.

We listened, and we’re proud to offer these services to our current data center clients…and to organizations who aren’t data center customers. (This service is an option for any company!)

Let your IT team focus on what they do best. And let FIBERTOWN manage your bandwidth contracts and monitor your sites to make sure they stay up and get repaired quickly.

Complete this form to talk with us more about internet management and monitoring services.

Your New Year’s Resolution – To Choose the Right Data Center

Each January, many of us set goals or choose a word or phrase as a focus for the new year. It’s our attempt to leave behind bad habits or anything that didn’t work and to look ahead to the possibilities. Businesses do this as well. January is a month for wiping the slate clean and getting a fresh start.

If your company knows it needs better protection for its hardware or is outgrowing its on-premise data center, then set a goal this year to choose the right data center.

We’ve taken the guesswork out of this process by creating a checklist to guide your data center search.

How This Checklist Helps Determine the Best Data Center for Your Company

Selecting a new data center or making the decision for colocation services is not an easy choice. Your budget, personnel, quality of your hardware, and business needs all play into the decision. Plus, fancy marketing language from facilities vying for your business and the “this is how we’ve always done it” mindset from your company leaders may affect the decision too.

Therefore, we created this checklist to help potential clients focus on the aspects of the data center itself. It removes all the distractions so you’re considering only the quality of the data center. Because that’s the first step in choosing an ideal one for your organization.

What Constitutes a Quality Data Center

When you resolve to select a data center, you’ll start by considering the most talked about, most popular features – connectivity, security, and power. Our checklist takes these critical features and breaks them down into the specific elements that constitute them.

For example, when a facility claims to have backup power, what does that mean? Are there generators onsite? Are there single points of failure?

When describing connectivity, is the data center located along major fiber routes and connectivity corridors? Does the facility offer enterprise-grade blended connectivity with 100% SLA? Does the data center have dual-entry connectivity to lessen the impact of unexpected interruptions?

When you use this checklist, you’ll know the questions, plus many more, to ask and the details to seek. No guesswork on your part.

Don’t Forget to Consider These Factors for a Data Center

We’ve found in over 25 years of business that people truly matter. It may sound strange for a data center, a business deeply entrenched in technology and the latest innovations, to write about the need for humans. Yet, when we poll our clients, we get consistent, positive feedback about our personnel who monitor the hardware in our two data centers in Houston and Bryan, Texas. We have real people working inside our data centers 24/7/365 so clients have eyes and hands in place to help if needed.

In your search for a data center, we encourage you to consider more than technology. Ask questions to learn about the onsite staff. Are they knowledgeable and well-trained? Does the data center provide visual inspections to assist with remote troubleshooting? Do you get a human response to a request within 15 minutes? (If your equipment goes down, time to repair is the most important factor.)

In our checklist, we’ve included these considerations and many others. They help you determine if you’re partnering with the most reliable and the most well-monitored data center available to you.

FIBERTOWN’s Data Centers in Houston and Bryan, TX Make the Grade

This checklist is thorough and a great resource in your search for a quality facility. It assesses features from a data center’s financial health to its reinforced roof structure for chillers and pumps to its multiple utility feeds for customer equipment. And these features just scratch the surface of what you’ll find on the checklist.

Get it here. And we wish you well in your New Year’s resolution to find the perfect data center.

(Pardon us for bragging, but we score very high on this checklist.)

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Top Technology Trends for 2023

Nearly three years later, businesses are still reeling from 2020. The way we work and how businesses function changed drastically when COVID-19 ravaged the world. The uncertainty in Eastern Europe and the supply chain disruptions also have altered how organizations operate.

Many of the technology trends predicted for 2023 relate to efficiency and sustainability with artificial intelligence (AI) taking center stage. We highlight those tech trends below.

(While we encourage you to stay abreast of the latest trends, we strongly suggest you protect the foundation of any technology – your hardware. Top-notch data centers like FIBERTOWN keep your hardware protected and up and running when outside disruptions happen.)

5G is Spreading Fast

5G, or the fifth generation of cellular networks, is being rolled out to more of the world in 2023. Advantages with 5G include faster connection speeds, lower latency, and greater bandwidth than the previous generations of networks.

So, why does 5G matter in business? Data will move even faster, and more devices can be connected to an organization’s network at once, allowing businesses to move at speeds never before experienced. Technologies like self-driving cars and robot nurses become a real possibility for more organizations due to the connection speed 5G provides.

Emissions and Power Usage Will be Measured

2023 will usher in a real attempt to quantify a company’s emissions and power usage. According to Newsweek, “In 2023, solutions will emerge to help companies measure and categorize their emissions and power consumption in a repeatable, consistent, auditable way.” Developers will create more robust technologies for tracing and analyzing emissions and power. Full-scale emissions management software will be created and improved.

People worry that the progress in technology further hurts the climate (e.g., greater use of electricity). Experts predict, though, that advancements in technology can help with sustainability, rather than be a detriment.

Demonstrate the Decision-Making Ability of AI

To no one’s surprise, AI is still advancing at lightning speed in 2023. Mass adoption, though, is the challenge. As CIO notes, “Organizations must be able to explain the reason why a computer came to a decision.” CIO further explains, “Gartner has found that only 50% of AI models ever hit production and that the reasons behind this are lack of trust in the data, and problems with security and privacy.”

So, while AI offers a world of possibilities for individuals and organizations, it’s not without issues. 2023 will focus on building the trustworthiness of AI.

Adaptive AI is the Next Frontier

Adaptive AI is the next frontier for AI. It aims to make decisions faster using live-feed data. Adaptive AI allows organizations to test and adjust in changing real-world circumstances. As discussed in the previous section, though, progress in this field is reliant on trustworthy data.

FIBERTOWN is Ready for 2023

We’re excited to see what 2023 holds! The advancements in AI and the spread of 5G will bring new possibilities to organizations, ones unavailable prior to 2023. And this new year promises more ways to decrease emissions and power usage for businesses. The future is looking bright.

We end this article with a reminder to protect your hardware. While technology trends are exciting, secure, protected hardware is the foundation for all tech advancements. Learn more about our Houston and Bryan, TX data centers.

And use this form to contact us.

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Is Your Generator Reliable? Do You Have Backup Power?

On Sunday night, November 27th, Houston residents received a boil water notice. A water purification plant in the city had experienced a brief power disruption, causing water pressure to drop below the minimum requirement of 20 PSI. This drop in pressure is what caused officials to give the boil water notice as a precaution for residents.

State and local entities worked with guidance from the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality to lift the boil water notice about 40 hours later. And for that we’re grateful.

A Cautionary Tale…

This article is not intended to put down an organization. (In fact, we commend the quick, safe approach by the Houston authorities and greatly appreciate their efforts.) Instead, this article is a cautionary tale about backup power for all businesses.

We ask these serious questions.

Are the generators at your on-premise data center and/or office building reliable?
Do you have redundant power?
Are there plans in place if you lose power?
What service outages would your customers experience if you lost power completely for 2 minutes? 15 minutes? For an hour?
How much revenue would you lose? Are lives at stake if you lose power?
What damages would your hardware experience with a power loss?

You Don’t Have to Have All of the Answers

Truthfully, just typing the questions above makes our hearts beat rapidly. The ramifications of an outage for a company without backup power are expensive, time-consuming, and can cost human lives.

Power redundancy (i.e., having multiple sources of power) is a serious consideration for companies. Redundancy means reliability and peace of mind. And it’s for these reasons that clients choose a data center like FIBERTOWN.

It’s our job to have and maintain utility and generator power for your hardware. (We go into more detail about the traits of a top-rated data center in this article).

FIBERTOWN Can Keep You Up and Running

We have two data centers – one in Houston and one in Bryan-College Station. These data centers are fitted with redundant power and cooling systems. Backup generators are on site, and they are manned by IT professionals 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

We’ll keep your company’s hardware up and running, even if the world outside is without power.

Ask us how we do this! We’d love to tell you more.

Author: Tony Froelich