Tag: fibertown

Data Center   Feature   Latest 0 comments on FIBERTOWN Turns 25!

FIBERTOWN Turns 25!

We are celebrating 25 years in business! What a feat!

FIBERTOWN got its start in 1997. And to put that in perspective, Napster was not invented yet. Worry over Y2K was, well, no worry at all. The Spice Girls ruled the world. Titanic was sinking all of its competition at the box office. And 56K was top speed for dial-up internet. Times were good.

FIBERTOWN’s Beginnings

We like to think, though, that we made the late 90s just a bit better when our management began our first data center. In fact, we’ve been under the same management since the start, and we’re proud of that. It’s allowed for consistency in customer service and maturity in our decision-making as we’ve changed with the needs of our customers.

Remember, 56K internet was rockin’ when we started so we’ve seen some changes over the years! Navigating those technology advancements, from dial-up to now the cloud, has given us insight that, frankly, our younger competitors just don’t have.

FIBERTOWN Grows

In 2007, our management opened FIBERTOWN’s data center in Bryan-College Station, Texas. They had something special and wanted to fully realize its potential – to offer colocation services and disaster recovery capabilities. And, they made that happen! Today this colocation site is equipped with state-of-the-art network connectivity, security, and business continuity amenities.

The Bryan and College Station area was chosen due to its location. It’s a day trip (from 90 to 170 miles) from four big cities in Texas – Houston, San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas. It’s 150 miles off the Gulf Coast to prevent direct damage from a hurricane, and it’s located outside of tornado alley. With multiple major highways leading to the area, Bryan-College Station is accessible, which is a vital characteristic of a data center.

Then, in 2011, we opened FIBERTOWN’s Houston data center. This second location in the “big city” means more companies get to experience our “small town” customer service. With the growth of business and people in our state of Texas, we wanted to assist even more organizations because we offer something special. Like our Bryan-College Station site, Houston is a colocation and disaster recovery center.

Its 2N power configuration (concurrently maintainable) and our 100% uptime SLA for power, cooling, and networking keep our customer’s data safe and business running as usual.

FIBERTOWN Has Been Busy

For the past 25 years, we’ve been busy! We’ve worked with companies in the energy, financial, retail, and logistics industries. We’ve also worked with higher education organizations and school districts, plus government entities ranging from local groups to statewide organizations.

One recent example is the Brazos County Emergency Operations Center (CEOC), a multi-jurisdiction organization comprised of the emergency management personnel from Brazos County, City of Bryan, City of College Station, and Texas A&M. Prior to contracting with FIBERTOWN, the center’s employees were monitoring and communicating the community’s weather and public safety from three different locations. This process grew wearisome and worrisome. So, we provided colocation services at our Bryan-College Station Data Center. It is convenient for the center’s staff and offers room for up to 200 people when an emergency occurs. We’re proud to serve our community in this way!

Healthcare providers like Kelsey-Seybold are turning to FIBERTOWN for data center and colocation services as well. With the unending pressure to cut costs while offering high-quality, effective services, healthcare providers are looking more and more to colocation for their IT infrastructure needs. And we’re glad to help! (We can’t treat a sick patient, but we know redundant systems and connectivity!)

What’s Next for FIBERTOWN 

We have big plans. You don’t survive and thrive for 25 years in business, including the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020, without some gumption and forward-thinking! In the coming articles, we’ll reveal what we plan to tackle next.

As always, though, our first concern is customer satisfaction. It’s this focus that’s allowed us to make it to this big milestone. We learn a lot by listening to clients and what they want and need from colocation and disaster recovery data centers like ours. With competitive rates and 100% uptime SLA for power, cooling, and networking (all three components – not just one!), we’re listening and providing.

If you have questions about our services, we’d love to talk with you. Fill out this contact form to start the conversation.

We can’t wait to see what the next 25 years hold!

Data Center   Latest 0 comments on Points to Consider for Data Center Migration

Points to Consider for Data Center Migration

As a company grows, the need for data protection grows too. A data center, which is a space, building, or group of buildings designed to hold computer systems and other necessary parts, becomes an important investment for growing organizations. The protection a data center affords to both hardware and, consequently, data is vital and can’t be overlooked.

Companies can choose to construct their own private data centers, often called on-premise or onsite data centers (when built on or near company property). Or, organizations can choose colocation centers where a group of companies share the space and services provided by the data center personnel. A colocation center, like ours in Houston or in Bryan-College Station, Texas, is a great option for most companies because of the cost-effectiveness and a staff solely dedicated to data protection.

Whether your organization is migrating to a data center for the first time or it’s changing from one data center to another, there are points to consider before moving.

Read below for our suggestions. And contact us if you have questions about our Bryan or North Houston colocation centers.

100% Uptime

 Every data center has a service level agreement (SLA). This document defines two important aspects – the types of service provided by the center to your company and the amount of downtime allowed by the data center without penalties.

At FIBERTOWN, we offer 100% uptime SLA for power, cooling, and bandwidth services. Most other data centers are 99.999% or “five-nines” as it’s often called. This means, they allow 5.256 minutes of downtime every year (525,600 minutes X .00001).

Our 100% uptime in our SLA makes us stand out from the competitors. And this leads to another point for consideration.

What Uptime Truly Means in the SLA

For FIBERTOWN, our SLA covers power, cooling, and networking. Just like our 100% uptime, this guarantee of all three critical components gives us an edge on our competitors.

We make sure power and cooling and network are up and going, rather than just one of the three. After all, it doesn’t matter if you have power but no networking. You are still unable to communicate with your equipment, which means business halts. And the same is true for networking but no power.

When shopping for a data center, read the SLA carefully to understand what is considered uptime for that provider. And, what components will be guaranteed to be operational – power, cooling, and networking or only one of the three?

Not Happy with Services at Your Current Data Center

This is a common situation for companies. Your organization grows quickly or, perhaps, you didn’t read the SLA fine print. Either way, you sign a contract with a data center and realize it doesn’t meet all of your needs and expectations. While we won’t encourage you to break a contract with another center, there are steps you and your next data center personnel can take to ramp up protection and services until your contract ends with your previous provider.

For example, at FIBERTOWN, we can ramp up services for 90 days prior to a full contract going into effect. The first advantage, you only pay for what you are using. You schedule your move and only pay for those cabinets you migrate to until you get out of your other provider’s agreement.

This leads to the second advantage of a 90-day ramp-up. You get to move in over time. Not a rushed move. Instead, a calculated, well-planned move.

To summarize, we aim to be flexible. Tell us what you need, and we can help find solutions.

As Joe Langston, our Vice President of Operations, says, “Our goal is to aid in our customer’s success.”

Don’t be unhappy with your current provider, or stay for longer than you need. The security of your company’s data is at stake.

What Questions Do You Have for FIBERTOWN?  

Choosing a data center and moving there are hard. Studying the SLA and having the tough conversations you must have if a data center is not providing quality protection – none of these things are easy.

And while we can’t make the move easy, we at FIBERTOWN believe data center migration can be easier. We work to make your migration to one of our two locations smooth…a walk in the park.

What other questions do you have about our two data centers and services? Contact us to ask.
Data Center   Megaport 0 comments on FIBERTOWN Keeps You Connected with Blended Internet, Cross Connects and Megaport

FIBERTOWN Keeps You Connected with Blended Internet, Cross Connects and Megaport

Do you remember the cell phone commercials from the early 2000s, “Can you hear me now?” The actor traversed insane environments (high snowdrifts, torrential rain, skyscrapers, etc.) while talking on the phone, and every time, he stayed connected. He never lost phone signal.

The premise of the commercials was simple – If you’re our customer, your calls won’t drop. We keep you connected.

At FIBERTOWN data centers, we keep you connected too. And similar to those old commercials, we do so during insane events – hurricanes, tornadoes, ice storms, and more.

In this article, we’re sharing three ways we make sure you never lose network connection and always have access to your data…fast.

Blended Internet – What is it? Why is it important?

Blended internet is like the phrase suggests. It blends, combines, and brings together multiple internet providers into a single service for the data center customer. As a FIBERTOWN client, you don’t have access only to AT&T, for example, but to AT&T, Cogent, Comcast, Lumen, and more. See here for a list of our internet providers.

Blended internet is an important option for several reasons. First, it’s more time effective and easier for the data center customer. We at FIBERTOWN manage the connectivity for you and provide one invoice for the billing cycle (i.e., you don’t receive bills from multiple providers). You have a single point of contact when you need help, saving you time and frustration.

Second, FIBERTOWN’s blended internet offers Smart Routing. FIBERTOWN’s Smart Routing factors, in real-time, latency, transit costs, jitter, and more to send your data the smartest (i.e., the most efficient) route. Blended internet typically moves traffic the shortest path so your data gets to its destination the fastest.

Third, blended internet offers you more reliability. Our data center already provides you with redundant power and cooling. But why stop there? Blended internet completes the redundancy trifecta, so you stay up while others are down. With multiple network providers at your service, failover is already configured. This also means you no longer need to buy a backup internet circuit.

In summary, due to our strong partnerships with internet service providers (ISPs), FIBERTOWN offers blended internet that gives you peace of mind. Failover configurations, redundancy, and faster routing are just some of the advantages.

Cross Connects – What are they? How are they useful?

Do you remember in the early days when we actually plugged into the internet? We used an Ethernet cord to attach our device to the phone line in the wall where the internet lived. For the time we were plugged in, we had internet, 56Kbps internet, and it was glorious.

Cross connects in a data center are like the early days of the internet (but more sophisticated, obviously). Cross connects use cables like Ethernet or Fiber Optic to connect one unit to another unit in a data center. You may see it described as a “point to point connection.” A common example is when trading companies utilize cross-connects between servers in a data center to ensure trades are made quickly.

Cross connects are beneficial for a variety of reasons. Two of the most apparent are reliability and fast traffic. With a hardwired connection, the only variables are the connection points. Cross connects are not subject to wireless traffic congestion, which reduces latency and improves data security.

Megaport – What is it? Why is it important?

Megaport is similar to what the word implies – a port that offers big capabilities. Megaport, through a single gateway, gives customers access to cloud services like AWS, Office 365, Oracle, Google, and many more. Essentially, Megaport does the complex tasks like housing ports worldwide and performing maintenance, while you enter the global cloud simply through a single port.

At FIBERTOWN, we’re proud Megaport providers. Through our partnership, we offer your business cloud connectivity that is fast, agile, and scalable. You are able to contract it through us to avoid more contracts and invoices. Let Fibertown be your pass-through and enjoy the same service for the same price without having to read and sign more legal documents!

Advantages to Megaport include a fast spin up, reduced latency, more secure data, and cost-effectiveness. (You pay for your port on your FIBERTOWN billing cycle, meaning you do not sign a contract with Megaport.)

FIBERTOWN customers enjoy redundancy and reliability for cloud services without the hassle of cloud maintenance and complicated billing. Megaport makes cloud connectivity easy. We and our customers like that.

Why Choose FIBERTOWN

“Can you hear me now?” was a popular phrase in the early 2000s because of the phone commercial. And the premise is still an important one for businesses. Without connectivity, customers are not served because data is compromised or is moving so slowly that it’s not useful.

FIBERTOWN data centers in Houston, Texas, and Bryan/College Station, Texas provide customers with reliable connections. Through blended internet, cross-connects, and Megaport, we keep you connected and business moving forward.

To learn more information about these offerings and how they’re beneficial for your business, contact us.