What Type of Data Center Connectivity Do You Need?

If you are considering a move to a colo center or setting up an off-site data center or private cloud for your company, you’ll have some challenges and opportunities for connectivity arrangements. Let’s see what to consider and where those cost savings opportunities are.

The difference between on-campus and remote data centers, including colocation facilities, is the contrast between local wiring where you have complete control of the network versus leasing network connections through service providers. Chances are that you have a relationship with a bandwidth provider now for dedicated Internet access and private lines to other company facilities. You’ll simply be expanding that relationship with your current or other competitive service providers.

There are two types of connectivity to be concerned about for data center bandwidth, not counting the local wiring interconnecting your equipment in the racks. That local wiring is the same as you would have if the servers, disks and network appliances were located down the hall instead of across town or in another state. The other connections you need are from your equipment racks to the outside world and from your existing facilities to the colo center.

The largest bandwidth consumption will likely be WAN bandwidth connected to your servers at the data center. This is one of the biggest advantages to relocating off-site. Colocation facilities are attractive to carriers, who establish network points of presence within the facility to serve all of the businesses collocating there. Not just one carrier, either. There’s just too much business to be had concentrated within the walls of the colo. Several, if not many, carriers will set up shop in the colo and try to garner as much WAN bandwidth business as they can. That’s why colocation centers are often called “carrier hotels.”

The advantage to you is that there are multiple providers all vying for your business. Since you are typically all located within a single building, there are no issues regarding construction of lines. The lines are a few hundred meters at most running from a carrier’s equipment to yours through colo provided conduit. Both copper and fiber are readily available. In fact, the colo center may provide the connections themselves to keep everything standardized.

As you might suspect, the ease of connection and competing carriers makes for excellent prices on bandwidth. You’ll likely find better prices per Mbps or Gbps in the colo center than you will for the lines connecting your current facility. That’s a major strategic advantage for colo providers. You want to move your high traffic equipment, especially any services provided via the Internet, to the colo.

There is a bandwidth tradeoff involved. Since your servers are now located remotely, you’ll need bandwidth to communicate with them. The trade generally works out that the bandwidth needed to connect employees to operate the collocated equipment is less than the bandwidth needed to connect all users, including customers, to that same equipment. If colocation makes sense for your operation, there should be a net savings on your telecom services expenses overall. If not, that savings needs to come from reduced capital expenditures, facilities operation and maintenance, power and HVAC, and staffing. Sometimes you can save in all these areas through colocation.

Are you ready to consider a move to an off-site data center or colocation facility? Be sure to factor in your bandwidth needs and potential savings now available. Check availability and pricing for data center connectivity now.



Note: Photo of data center servers courtesy of WikimediaCommons

The Cheaper T1 Line is a T1 Line

Your telecommunications infrastructure is really the heart of your business. You've been using T1 lines for both PBX telephone and dedicated Internet access. They work great. But business has slowed and every manager is scouring the expense reports for line items to cut. Of course you can't just cut off telephone and Internet access. Everybody might as well go home. But isn't there a cheaper solution? Can't you get roughly the same service for less even if performance and reliability might take a hit? I mean, it's crunch time. Right?

Don't go there. At least not yet. Yes, professional grade business telecom line services can stick out on an expense report like the proverbial sore thumb. But before you start fantasizing about cutting your telecommunication expenses by 20% to 50%, consider these 2 important points:

1. Those "consumer" grade broadband phone and Internet services won't have the performance or reliability that you're accustomed to now. Garbled phone calls. Outages that last hours, even days. How are your customers and suppliers going to react to that?

2. There is no need to downgrade service when you can keep the same service level but just pay less.

Point number one should give you serious pause. Point number two needs some explaining.

You see, the cheaper T1 line may still be a T1 line. How is that possible? It's because there are competitive service options out there that you probably have never heard of.

Think about how you acquired your original line service contract. It was probably a long time ago and your only real option was to call up the local telephone company and read them a list of what you needed. An account executive dutifully looked up the tariffs and prepared a service contract for you to sign. Next thing you know, all the phones have dial tone and all the computers have Internet access. After that it is just a matter of having the accounting department pay the monthly bill.

That was then. This is now. What's different now is that the competitive landscape has changed. Where once there was only the phone company, now there are a few dozen competitive service providers offering a wider selection of options and for a lot less money. But unless you've gotten wind of this somehow and taken the initiative to seek out those competitive providers, you'll never know how much less you could be paying.

T1 lines are a good example. Only a few years ago, spending a thousand dollars a month for a standard T1 voice or data line was just the cost of doing business. Today the same line service level may be available for half that or less. It all depends on where you are located and how much telecom infrastructure building has been going on in the area. But even in rural areas prices have come down noticeably. So, how much less can you really pay for the same service?

Glad you asked. Every situation is unique, so the only way to know for sure is to run a competitive quote for the exact business address and main telephone number in question. Thanks to development of the GeoQuote (tm) search engine, this process is now automated. In fact, you can submit your location information in one minute and have a list of competing line prices the next. Want to see how it works? Run a T1 line service automated quote right now!