LightBound will be doing a Lunch and Learn on June 16th at 731 W. Henry Street. Come see the new evolution in VoIP PBX solutions and how LightBound is adding Hosted VoIP PBX solution to our stable of Cloud Serves including Virtual Servers, Virtual Storage, Managed Services.
We will be doing a live demostration of our Hosted VoIP PBX solutions and how if can make your organization more productive.
LightBound has been the leader in Indiana Internet Services since the early 90's.
Look forward to seeing you at our demo of Hosted Voip PBX Services.
When SunPorch, the leading manufacturer of ready-to-assemble sunroom kits, needed call center capabilities it thought outsourcing was the only option. Fonality said no way! Beating bids from Avaya, Cisco and 3Com, Fonality’s PBXtra Call Center and HUD Agent improved SunPorch’s marketing and customer service programs while saving the company 100K in advertising costs. Oh yeah, it saved the day after Hurricane Ike and also paid for itself in three months.
SunPorch is the leading manufacturer of ready-to-assemble sunroom kits. To provide better customer service in its Westport Connecticut-based sales office, SunPorch needed call center capabilities that would allow calls to be routed to the appropriate person or department, and cost-effectively scale as its staff grew. SunPorch selected Fonality’s PBXtra Call Center and HUD Agent software to replace its legacy PBX system. Outsource? No Way.
“Initially we thought that the only call center solution we could afford was to outsource to a third party,” said James McFarland, IT director at SunPorch. “With PBXtra Call Center we were able to keep our call center operations in house, which meant we could provide higher levels of customer service and maintain better control of our sales and marketing efforts.”
In addition to Fonality, SunPorch also looked at call center systems from Avaya, Cisco and 3Com. According to MacFarland, “the main driving factor for purchasing Fonality over the alternatives was essentially lower costs. PBXtra Call Center paid for itself in the first three months by eliminating the need for expensive consultants to set up and administer the system. Fonality does an awesome job of pre-configuring the system and the phones— all you have to do is plug everything in. I had the whole system up and running in less than one day.” Saving $100K on Advertising Costs
The Fonality phone system is delivering significant value to SunPorch’s advertising programs. According to Leo Mueller, director of marketing at SunPorch, “because of Fonality, we can be much more nimble and responsive to our market. PBXtra Call Center helps us maximize the return on our advertising expenditures by reducing sales leads not associated with a lead source. We can quickly and easily assign a different phone number to each ad, which allows us to automatically record where a caller learned about SunPorch without having to ask them.”
This simple approach to tracking advertisements has returned some significant returns. SunPorch now clearly understands how specific advertisements are performing and can easily make decisions that directly impact the bottom line. “Thanks to PBXtra Call Center we’ve been able to more accurately target our advertising dollars and have reduced our annual overall expenses by $100,000,” said Mueller.
Additionally, Mueller recognizes that PBXtra Call Center has indirectly improved SunPorch’s sales program. Since the Fonality call center system has been providing the company with better data and management has been able to make more accurate and focused decisions about where to advertise, SunPorch has increased its lead acquisition by 10 percent. “It’s amazing. Even though the downturn in the economy is impacting customer purchasing decisions, we’ve still seen an increase in the number of home owners interested in our product.” New Revenue and Better Customer Service
PBXtra Call Center has also helped SunPorch define new revenue-generating marketing campaigns, including new offerings to its existing customer base. This previously untapped group was the ideal candidate for product upgrades, but SunPorch couldn’t move forward on this type of campaign without Fonality. With PBXtra Call Center, SunPorch was able to set up specific call queues for current customer marketing programs that rang into five remote phones at its factory and then rolled over to the Connecticut headquarters when calls to the factory could not be answered. These capabilities made it possible for the company to efficiently sell to and support its most important audience.
PBXtra Call Center’s call queues have been a big help in improving SunPorch’s overall customer service. “PBXtra’s call queues and music on hold with sales voice-overs reduce the number of abandoned calls we receive. The queues let callers know how much longer they have to wait, which makes it less likely that they will hang up, and music or sales information on hold helps keep them entertained while they are waiting,” said Mueller. He has also been impressed with Fonality’s reporting matrix, which helps SunPorch monitor call center performance and adjust accordingly to improve the customer experience. In the Wake of Hurricane Ike
Mueller gained extra appreciation for PBXtra Call Center after Hurricane Ike knocked out power to the company’s Louisville factory.
PBXtra Call Center’s unique hybrid-hosted Anywhere Management feature enabled Mueller to remotely access the call center system and record an emergency greeting in less than 10 minutes without hiring an expensive consultant. PBXtra Call Center allowed SunPorch to quickly implement a professional recording in response to the emergency, which helped maintain customer service levels and ensured calls could be redirected to the company headquarters for handling.
“The remote management of PBXtra Call Center is terrific,” said Mueller. “It gave me so much flexibility to make sure our customers were taken care of, even during a natural disaster.” PBXtra and HUD - Essential Business Tools
In terms of its technical abilities, McFarland has been equally impressed with Fonality. “There are so many great things about our PBXtra system. The voice prompts, call queues and powerful web-based configuration are all fantastic. HUD helps us to enhance communication within the office, since we know whether someone is on the phone or not. We also like HUD’s drag-and-drop call transferring capabilities and its integration with caller ID on the PC desktop. Also, the PBXtra system easily integrated with the rest of my IT infrastructure, something I couldn’t do if I was working with a proprietary phone system.”
Mueller sums up how SunPorch feels about Fonality. “It’s simple — Fonality enables us to better serve our customers. PBXtra and HUD are essential business tools for our company — I don’t know how we lived without them.”
LightBound utilizes Fonality for both our premise based VoIP PBX solutions and our Hosted VoIP services. Our managed services can be added like Shared Storage Server, Collocation services, Cloud Services and many more that make LightBound a leader in Virtual Network Services in Indiana.
LightBound, your Virtual Service provider, can combine your managed services, voice and data services to provide you with a seamless Cloud Service that is economical and provides the business continuity that all businesses require regardless of their technical expertise.
LightBound is an Indiana VoIP provider that is now offering a complete hosted VoIP service service. If you are looking for VoIP PBX Solutions and don't want to invest a lot of up front capital this is the service that you have been looking for. A hosted VoIP service is a great part of a Business Continuity solution that can help keep your business up and running in the event of business disruption at your office. The LightBound hosted voice fits directly inthe Cloud Services model that many customers are looking for today. If you have been looking at outsourcing management of services to a provider of virtualization services, replication of critical data to a off-site virtual storage or off site data backup service, why not consider moving your phone system to a provider of hosted VoIP PBX solutions like LightBound. The service starts at 5 users and will scale up to 100 users. The hosted service uses Fonality trixBox Enterprise Edition which provides an award winning user interface, HUD, to help improve productivity. See HUD for Employees or HUD for Executives for all the productivity enhancement the your business can benefit from. If your organization outgrows the hosted application and you need an on premise VoIP PBX Solutions its an easy transition to a dedicated Fonality VoIP server for your business. LightBound can simplify the operations of your business by being a single source for Internet Service Indiana
Listed below are the answers to the questions I posed in Part 5 as applicable to LightBound's Shared Storage Server (s) and Hosted Virtual Server.
1.Where is the data?
All shared storage server (s) are managed within LightBound's secure datacenters in central Indiana.
2.Who owns the data?
The customer owns the data. LightBound has no rights to in any way modify, share, disseminate, or otherwise manipulate the data without the express permission of the customer.
3.Is the data backed up?
All LightBound Storage Area Network Solutions incorporate a thorough analysis with the customer to ensure that critical data is protected through backup and replication processes, aligned with the customer’s needs.
4.Can the data be extracted?
Yes, the customer is provided the means to extract their data upon request.
5.Are the data and servers volatile?
No, servers can be inactive or restarted at any time without loss of data or virtualization services.
6.Who has access to the data and servers?
Access is restrictive to only the customer and their affiliates. Unless providing managed cloud services, LightBound does not nor have access to the customers critical data.
If you have a Compellent or Scale SAN and desire to replicate for business continuity or data disaster recover LightBound offers Storage as a Service to meet your needs. LightBound can be the one stop shop to accommodate as we have Indiana WAN services with multiple carriers to provide a large circuit directly from your office to our data center to provide backup needs. A large circuit is generally needed as 100 GB takes 2.2 hours to replicate your SAN. If you have a SAN with another manufacturer and would like off site data backup service you can use a backup application to a NFS or CIFS share to back up remotely. If you need to also need a server platform to recoer we also offer hosted virtual server platform that can be paired with replicated SAN or can be used to restore backup data. If you would like some more information plan on attending our lunch and learn in April or contact one of our account managers.
Come hear about one of the most exciting stories in the technology industry in Indiana on February 10, 2010 @ 11:30 by attending LightBound's lunch and learn. Go to www.lightbound.net to register. Scale Computing has been recognized as one of the top 20 technology companies to watch in 2010. Scale is headquartered out of Indianapolis. LightBound is a Scale Computing partner having deployed their solution for managed storage services for use with managed servers hosting or server collocation. The Scale solution is a very cost effective solution for local storage (3 TB for $14K). LightBound managed storage services can facilitate a data disaster recovery plan through a high speed WAN connection to provide off site data back service to yield a very effective business continuity plan in event of a disaster. Come learn about what we have to offer!
LightBound offers Managed Servers Hosting as do several other Indiana Server Hosting companies. Why choose LightBound over others? See below for a few reasons:
1) LightBound has been supporting IP services since the mid-90's through their ISP service and has a fully redundant, high capacity Internet connection directly connected to the NAP, peeering with Equinix packet exchange. LightBound also has four connections to top tier Internet providers at the NAP so Internet service is going to be rock solid high speed internet in Indiana. LightBound has total control and visibility of it's Internet upstream connectivity. other providers may have several connections to ISP's. LightBound IS the ISP for managed servers hosting.
2) LightBound provides a flexible, customized server hosting rather than just a few options. You can choose bare-metal and work with your internal IT staff or IT consulting firm to provide OS, development or application platform, or LightBound can provide all these services.
3) LightBound deploys security technologies at the VM level to secure your managed server from other environments. This has been designed to satisfy compliance regulations. This provides the most cost effective model for the customer versus dedicating server blade in a chassis to each customer.
4) LightBound has Data Disaster Recover/Business Continuity service to provde computer and phone directly for your internal staff to get to managed hosting services with 32 seats ready to go and capacility for up to 60 workstations. No worrying about a third party to deliver this service.
5) LightBound has 19 telecommunication carriers with facilities in the data center. If your business has multiple branches and terminates circuits in the data center to get to the managed servers cost efficienciences can be realized by choosing from the manay carriers to get the best cost.
Are you looking for High Speed Internet in Indiana for your Server Collocation and Managed Servers Hosting? LightBound can take care of this for your business. Our Internet is not like the DSL or Cable Internet offering that you get at your home. We have a 24 x 7 x 365 data center NOC staffed around the clock.We are a top tier business Internet provider with direct links to the NAP in Chicago and Ashburn, VA with direct peering connection with Equinix packet exchange.Through this the server is one hop away from Internal networks at Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and hundreds of others. We have two 2.5GB connections to the NAP, and each connection has two 1 GB upstream (for redundancy) to top Internet carriers.Our 2.5 GB connection to Chicago is also redundant with a diverse path.We have very large customers with high availability requirements so we have architected this network for premium service.That being said our pricing is not the cheapest, but we deliver the best value for your business, especially is your rely on High Speed Internet in Indiana.
LightBound, an Indiana Server Collocaton provider, also hosts managed servers. Managed Server Hosting is a cost-effective and secure method to house critical devices in LightBound's data center. LightBound can also help save costs of expensive devices, by providing a hosted server solution.
LightBound, an Indiana VoIP Service Provider now offers hosted voice service. Rather than having the overhead cost and maintenance of a phone server, LightBound can offer a VoIP PBX solution that allows the customer to purchase a dedicated or shared server that is housed at the LightBound data center.
LightBound, Indiana's premiere managed server hosting company, offers manged server solutions to help save overhead costs for its customers. LightBound can manged and monitor all types of servers in their high class data center. We offer mail server hosting, managed routers, firewalls, and many other specialized servers.
LightBound, an Indiana server collocation provider offers a unique solution to your business continuity needs. In our data center we can supply mail server hosting, high speed Internet, and off site data backup service, along with many other services.
Hosting uptime refers to the percentage of time the host is accessible via the internet. Many providers state that they aim for at least 99.9% uptime (roughly equivalent to 45 minutes of downtime a month, or less), but there may be server restarts and planned (or unplanned) maintenance in any hosting environment, which may or may not be considered part of the official uptime promise.
Many providers tie uptime and accessibility into their own service level agreement (SLA). SLAs sometimes include refunds or reduced costs if performance goals are not met.
LightBound, an Indiana Managed Server Host can now offer virtual managed servers and storage. This adds to the many service options for off site data backup. Business continuity is a vital component in today's business.
LightBound, an Indiana managed server host, has expanded its service offereings to include virtual servers, backups, and storgae via its new SAN. A storage area network (SAN) is an architecture to attach remote computer storage devices (such as disk arrays, tape libraries, and optical jukeboxes) to servers in such a way that the devices appear as locally attached to the operating system. Although the cost and complexity of SANs are dropping, they are still uncommon outside larger enterprises. A System Area Network (SAN) is a high-performance, connection-oriented network that can link a cluster of computers. LightBound can use this new technology to better serve its customers using a wide variety of data recovery, disaster recovery, business continuity, and sever collocation needs
I just met with a customer this week who was moving offices and in the move decided to outsource their support of servers and phones. Unaware that LightBound offers managed servers hosting through our new VM and shared server platform they looked to a competitor. We let them know that we are going to be offering this platform in Q1 2010 and possibly before the end of the year. They currently have Indiana VoIP service with us but were using their own phone system. We let them know that we offer VoIP PBX Solutions through Fonality's trixbox solution. By provider management of both their phones and server infrastructure the customer now has more cycles to support and develop their application to make money for their company.
I just finished a webinar on Fonality trixbox VoIP PBX Solutions with a K-12 education prospective customer. There were two features that they IT director really like. He thought the chat feature was a very usual feature built into trixbox Pro HUD. He thought that staff could use this quick method to communicate without having to play voicemail tag. He also liked the idea of the presence management through the HUD. He has staff distributed in five buildings over a dispersed area and liked the ability at a glance to see who is on line, and to quickly click an icon to chat, call their land line, cell phone, or email. Another feature he liked was managed servers hosting services that could be provided in support the solution for him. As long as he has high speed Internet in Indiana and direct WAN connection to the LightBound data center almost all support can be provided remotely over the Internet. In the event that on-site support is needed LightBound partners with the AME Group which can service all customers in Indiana within a 4 hour response time. The final thing he liked was that the Fonality trixbox is about half the cost of traditional VoIP PBX providers. With costs being tight for schools this is a great solution to consider to increase functionality at a low cost.
LightBound, a managed server hosting company in Indiana, offers server collocation. LightBound's data center can house mail servers, manage servers, and provide business continuity and disaster recovery options to help your business run smoothly.
Businesses have to plan for operating in event of a disruption in business operations at their main facilities. This planning is commonly referred to as business continuity. Since most business rely heavily on IT it would make sense to plan on having critical resources available over the Internet. Internet is highly available so employees can access when they are on the road traveling away from the office or working at home. To keep the business up and running it would pay off to have your critical information backed up using off site data backup service and using server collocation to have backup servers or primary servers This would surely help in data disaster recovery if the primary location was every effected by a power outage, damage of equipment, or theft. The data housed on equipment at the data center or back up service could be restored and get the business up and running at the main facility. LightBound can be a one stop shop for business continuity needs providing WAN, Indiana Server Hosting, and Internet Service Indiana.
Colocation is where servers are stored in a data center. The major difference is that instead of being leased, the servers are actually owned by the customers. Whereas a dedicated or managed host generally maintains the server, a colocation provider gives you access to the facility and allows you to manage your own hardware. The similarities include network connectivity, backup power sources and physical security. The greatest advantage of colocation is that it allows businesses to get the best of their servers who otherwise could not do so on their own. LightBound has one of Indiana's premier Data Centers and can also offer Data Disaster Recovery plans and Business Continuity advise..
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