Why Colocate To An Omaha Data Center

When big companies think of colocation data centers, they’re probably thinking of 60 Hudson St in New York City or One Wilshire in Los Angeles, California. Where else should they be thinking? Why, Omaha, Nebraska, of course.

Omaha? What’s in Omaha? Well, billionaire Warren Buffett, the “Oracle of Omaha”, and his legendary Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate holding company. That’s just one of five Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Omaha. In fact, Forbes magazine has called Omaha the nation’s number one “Best-Bang-For-The-Buck City.” More to the data center point, Omaha is home to the Scott Data Center complex.

Scott Data Center offers over 110,000 square feet of data storage facilities. It has been continually operating since 2006 and is currently just one of two multi-tenant data centers in the United States to achieve Tier III Certification for both design and construction. This certification was awarded by the Uptime Institute, an industry organization focused on improving data center performance and efficiency. They award tier certifications in 26 different countries. Tier III facilities support critical business applications.

One of the newest tenants is Level 3 Communications, the worldwide telecommunications carrier for voice, data, and video. Level 3 is deploying a new enterprise-grade data center within the Scott Data Center complex. It will join more than 350 Level 3 data center facilities in North America, Europe and Latin America. You can select the level of service you require, including the Premier Elite facilities, such as the new Level 3 Omaha data center. All of these data centers are connected via Level 3’s 165,000 intercity, metro and subsea fiber route miles that provide low latency access to corporate assets around the world.

But, still, why Omaha? The fact that Omaha is located in the center of the United States is an asset when it comes to disaster prevention and recovery. If you are insistent on avoiding a situation that wipes out your headquarters building and takes all of your IT facilities with it, you need redundant data centers that are geographically diverse. Keeping everything in one building is efficient, but it is risky for floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and fires. A separate facility across town is one step better. A facility someplace else in the country that doesn’t have the same risks is better yet.

Omaha isn’t subject to earthquakes and certainly not likely to be a victim of any coastal tsunamis. The Scott Data center design protects it from any potential seismic activity. It is elevated out of the flood plain to avoid any issues with an overflowing Missouri River. Yes, tornadoes can be an issue in the MidWest, but the Scott facility can withstand 250+ mph winds and the uplift of tornado level winds.

There are also financial advantages to locating in Omaha. Electrical power is available and costs well below the national average. You know that data centers are power intensive, both for equipment operation and cooling. There are also pricing and tax incentives that make Omaha an attractive place to build an expensive and sophisticated facility like a data center.

By the way, Scott Data Center meets the security requirements of the Department of Defense. That includes a 24/7 security desk, gated perimeter, dual authentication, surveillance cameras, barrier wall, man-traps, biometrics, generator backup and redundant cooling. Think your equipment and data will be safe? You think right.

Are you thinking about relocating your data center or establishing a complementary or alternative colocation facility to current coastal locations? Get features and pricing on colocation data center facilities available in Omaha and nationwide to meet your business needs.



Photo of Omaha skyline courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Managed IP Services Cloud

Cloud services are seeing a lot of interest lately, as companies look to reduce their capital expenditures for IT and gain capabilities they couldn’t otherwise afford. But did you know there are a wide range of IP services available in the cloud?

Cloud services can be in-house or private, or they can be purchased from a cloud services provider. Providers have a wide range of specialties. Some offer only remote storage. Others specialize in high performance computing. Still others offer alternatives to in-house telephone switching systems and even network security. What they all have in common is that their services run over IP networks. Hence, IP services or managed IP services.

The idea of managed services involves letting the carrier or services provider take over the job of making sure that everything is running correctly. Traditionally, that’s the job of the on-site IT staff who monitor what’s going on at all times and swing into action to make repairs whenever a fault occurs. Not every company can afford a 24/7 staff or even a full-time IT employee. Others may have a small staff that has gradually become overwhelmed as more and more applications have been turned up on the network. Managed services offer a way to offload some of this responsibility.

One basic managed service is the network WAN connection to the Internet. This could also be a private line between facilities or connections to an MPLS network to link multiple geographically diverse business locations. You often have the option of simply ordering a line service and then monitoring it yourself to ensure proper operation. The alternative is to have the carrier provide a router that allows them to monitor the line right up to the connection with your LAN. This is called a managed router or managed line service. Often you can get this management feature at no extra cost by shopping around.

The beauty of a managed router is that the carrier’s network operations staff is far larger than yours, available 24/7/365, and has the expertise in their own systems to rapidly troubleshoot and correct problems. It’s not uncommon to have a line failure in the middle of the night and have it back up and running before business hours commence. You may not even be aware than a fault occurred.

A step up from the managed line service is colocation of your servers and the bandwidth that feeds them to a carrier hotel or colocation center. You can elect to manage everything yourself or let the colo center staff handle server maintenance and repair, including any network connections.

Recently, Managed IP Telephony has become popular as an alternative to in-house PBX systems. Instead of a dedicated piece of switching equipment that you have to program and maintain, the telephony switch resides at the service provider. You connect by means of a network connection called a SIP Trunk. This assumes that you have converted to IP telephony or SIP phones and have converged your LAN for both voice and data.

SIP Trunking providers often go the extra step of providing both broadband Internet and telephone service on the same SIP trunk. This is a perfect interface to a converged local network that already transports both voice and data packets. Because the services and trunk line are fully managed, you are ensured that voice quality won’t suffer due to conflicts with data packets on the same line.

Would you like to ease the burden on your IT staff or avoid the capital expense of in-house facilities that may be more affordable in the cloud? If so, investigate Managed IP Services to see what’s available and compare costs.

OC3 Bandwidth Costs Just A Fraction Of What It Did

If you are a use of high bandwidth fiber optic connections, you know that these line services don’t come cheap. Well, actually, they do come cheaper these days. But you have to know what to look for and where to look.

Take OC3 bandwidth, for instance. Optical Carrier level 3 is one of a family of fiber optic carrier services using the SONET (Synchronous Optic NETwork) protocol developed for the major telephone carriers and later offered to large business organizations. OC-3 is actually the lowest commonly available SONET service and runs a at a transmission speed of 155.52 Mbps. Of that, 148.608 Mbps is dedicated to payload, with 6.912 Mbps needed to support the overhead of transmission.

Time was, just a few years ago, that OC3 was considered an enormous amount of bandwidth. It was only ordered by major Internet service providers, colocation hosting facilities, television distribution companies and other large corporations. Medium size companies got by with DS3 at 45 Mbps, roughly 1/3 the capacity of OC3. Smaller companies had their needs met by T1 lines running 1.5 Mbps.

Today, OC3 bandwidth is no longer consider as the ultimate business telecom service. Leading edge companies have moved on to Gigabit bandwidth levels and even 10 Gbps is not out of the question. Two factors have been driving that change. One is expansion of the carrier market with many new competitive carriers running their own fiber optic networks. The other is the demand for higher bandwidths by such needs as cloud computing services, HDTV video, CAD/CAM design and manufacturing, scientific supercomputer simulations, and electronic medical records transmission.

While OC3 offers about 155 Mbps, the next level, OC12, offers 622 Mbps, OC48 steps that up to 2.5 Gbps and OC192 provides 10 Gbps performance. These are all SONET switched circuit TDM technologies. Their competitors are IP packet switched networks offering 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, 1000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet and 10,000 Mbps 10GigE.

With so much competition in the fiber optic arena, prices have come down dramatically over the last decade. In fact, if you haven’t checked competitive pricing in a few years, you may be shocked at how many options you have and at the low lease prices available. But... you may not find these low prices at all unless you check with a bandwidth broker who has access to dozens of competitive service providers. We work with Telarus, Inc., arguably the most innovative and fastest growing telecom services broker today. Their dedication to customer service and extensive automation tools make it easy for you to inquire as to services and pricing and get an answer quickly. Go ahead and simply state your business bandwidth needs now and see how glad you are that you invested the 30 seconds or so that it took to submit that online inquiry.

Colocation Hosting Bandwidth Options

Where do you get the best deals on bandwidth? Where the telecommunications carriers are, of course. The farther you get from a carrier's POP or Point of Presence, the more you'll pay per Mbps for WAN bandwidth. That means there's only one thing to do. Move in with the carrier. Pack your servers because that really is the right solution.

Do carrier's actually take in boarders? Indeed, they do. CLECs or Competing Local Exchange Carriers often have termination equipment located on the premises of the ILEC or Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier. That's so they can get access to telephone lines to offer competing voice and data services. But what about other businesses?

Business meet carriers at a facility known as a colocation center or carrier hotel. The colocation center, or colo, is sometimes operated by a single competitive carrier. Others are run by third parties offering neutral territory to competing carriers and businesses all looking to make the best deals for IT services. The center operator provides a clean, secure, environmentally controlled building with wiring support infrastructure and backup power.

When you move into a colocation center, you usually bring your own servers and other network appliances. In some centers, you can rent servers on an exclusive or shared basis. You rent rack space for as many units as you need. Power and cooling are provided. You have the option to secure entire racks in locked cages for higher physical security. This is often called colocation hosting, regardless of who supplies the actual server equipment.

You connection to the outside world, including your own network access, is negotiated with the carrier of your choice. You may have several to choose from in a larger facility. Carriers are as anxious to be where the businesses are as businesses are anxious to have proximity to carrier services. Carriers have their own racks or rooms of termination equipment, just like businesses users. Service providers and service users get together in a "meet me" room or with a service drop from their switching rack to your server.

What types of bandwidth deals are available? Usually the best prices on each level of service. Remember that there are essentially no construction costs to provide you with service. Perhaps just a one-time fee for a service drop that may even be waived. Within the facility it is easy to run any type of copper or fiber optic physical connection, so there is no need to settle for installed lines with limited bandwidth just to get service.

Within the center, you generally have the option to get exactly the right type and quantity of bandwidth you need. This includes T1 or DS1, T3 or DS3, OC3, OC12, OC48 and higher SONET services. Also Ethernet from 10 Mbps through Gigabit Ethernet or even 10GigE. Many carriers can quickly and easily adjust the level of bandwidth they provider you on short notice. That's especially true of Ethernet services delivered on fiber optic cable.

So, who chooses colocation hosting rather than keeping everything within their own server rooms? Moving to a "colo" might actually cost you less per month that building, powering, cooling and staffing your own data center. In the case of businesses located outside of downtown metropolitan areas in major cities, especially those in rural areas, the cost of bandwidth may be much higher than in the carrier hotel. Out in the boonies, T1 connections may be all that is practical. It could easily make sense to use that T1 line to communicate with your server farm located within a distant colocation center. Chances are that neither your employees or customers can perceive that the servers running the online part of your business are 50 or 100 miles from your office and not located in the basement.

Does colocation hosting make sense for your business needs? Find out what options and pricing are available for your location with help from our team of voice and data experts. You may be surprised how much you can save by moving in with the carriers.