LightBound rolls out its SAN

Thursday, November 19, 2009 by Kate Rance

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

One stop shop for Phone & VM and Share Storage needs!

Friday, October 30, 2009 by Ron Pirau
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.

Fonality trixbox can be a great PBX solution for K-12

Wednesday, October 28, 2009 by Ron Pirau
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 offers Server Hosting

Tuesday, October 27, 2009 by Kate Rance
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.

Colocation for Business Continuity

Monday, October 12, 2009 by Ron Pirau
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. 

What is Colocation ?

Wednesday, September 30, 2009 by Brandon Ring
 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..

Advantages:

Cost Saving

Higher Availability

Enhanced Security

VoIP services to existing PBX and Phone systems delivers reliability and cost savings

Thursday, June 11, 2009 by Ron Pirau
If you are in need of an Indiana VoIP provider Lightbound can deliver the voice services you need.   We are one of the few commercial grade VOIP Service Providers that delivers our services solely over dedicated private circuits.  This is a critical point in delivering business quality VoIP services. There are many VOIP service providers that will deliver their services over the open Internet at a very low cost.  The problem is that the service does not work reliably. Sometimes it will work great.  Other times its worse that a bad cell phone call.   Reliability of your VoIP phone solution can be enhanced in a few ways.  First you can host your VoIP PBX Solutions our data center for server collocation which is the location of our voice switch.  No need to work about problems with circuit connections to your office.   If your circuit does go down the calls can be rerouted by calling our NOC and giving alternate numbers to call.  Cost savings can result by purchasing only the exact number of lines needed.   Instead of having to purchase a PRI with 23 lines, your can purchase only 15 lines if that is what your business needs.    Look at Lightbound for VoIP PBX Solutions if your want to increase reliability and save costs for your company.

Make sure your Internet Service Provider has redundancy

Thursday, June 4, 2009 by Ron Pirau
If you're business relies on having high availability Internet service make sure that your Internet DSL Internet or High Speed Internet in Indiana provider has upstream redundant connections.   Ask your Internet providers what business continuity and data disaster recovery plans they have to keep service running in event of upstream service interruption.  There are many Internet providers that only have a single upstream connection to the Internet.  There was a major outage in the area last week due to a fiber cut in a key communication line to an upstream Internet Provider in Chicago.  This left many customers without Internet Service.   Lightbound, which provides High Speed Internet in Indiana, has two 2.5 GB upstream connections, one to Herndon, Virginia and the other to Chicago.   Even though the Chicago connection was cut there still was a full 2.5 GB connection to Virginia that provided Lightbound customers uninterrupted Internet Access Indiana. This is very important if you are using managed servers hosting or server collocation in a facility that needs always available High Speed Internet in Indiana.                                                                                                                          

Save on operational costs with managed servers hosting

Tuesday, April 28, 2009 by Ron Pirau
In today's tight economy many companies are looking for ways to cut or control operational expenses or increase productivity of employees.  One way to do this is through managed servers hosting with an Indiana server hosting company that has high speed Internet in Indiana. Many companies have IT personnel who would be better focused on improving business processes specific to the company.  If a company would move the application servers to a managed servers hosting company the day to day maintenance and updating of the underlying operation system would be taking care of.   When in house personnel do the updates and maintenance they are wasting time on work that could be done more efficiently by a company that specializes in support of servers.   The company IT employees are much more familiar with their internal business process and applications and would be better off spending their time in creating competitive business advantages by making improvements on those processing.   Another way to cut costs is when an IT employee leaves voluntarily consider hiring a company who provides managed servers hosting to provide the services that the previous employee took care of.   The cost for  paying for IT support services for Indiana Servers Hosting may be less expensive in the long run the hiring a direct employee. Data centers with Internet Service Indiana can provider managed servers hosting and help increase productivity of your IT employees.

Optimize business continuity with data center high availability

Monday, April 20, 2009 by Ron Pirau
For Data Recovery Indiana consider setting up a Managed Servers Hosting at Lightbound's data center.  Many Small Business Server Hosting customers who are looking for business continuity are now setting up their backup or even their primary servers at the data center.   Lightbound provides 24 x 7 x 365 managed support with a high availability data center with power, HVAC, and security round the clock. Customer's can consolidate their data and use our Off site Data Backup Service along with Server collocation to protect their servers.  If they have a VOIP PBX solution they can move all their voice services to the data center as we are one of the few SIP Indiana VOIP providers.   Additionally centralizing WAN communications at the data center can completely provide a robust solution to keep a business up an running through most any type of weather related incident.  Look to Lightbound data center for the optimum in business continuity.

Winter and Business Continuity plans

Thursday, January 29, 2009 by Ron Pirau
The recent winter weather resulted in thousands of people being without power and probably effected hundred of businesses.   As a result there was a great deal of lost revenue from closed businesses and lost productivity due to workers not being able to get to work.   In order to minimize the lost revenue and productivity a business should have a business continuity plan to address situations.  A few key strategies to keep the business running is to host critical IT and Voice systems at a data center with server collocation.  When power goes down at the main office the critical systems are up and running.  Remote workers can get  to  the systems with Indiana DSL Internet and a VPN connection.  VoIP PBX solutions housed at the data center could take incoming calls and route to cell or home phones of home workers.   If workers are in areas that don't have power or phone service at the very least messages are going to voice mail.   I was able to work from a home office yesterday and was fully productive as I could get phone calls from customer and access all business IT systems remote to conduct my daily business.   My productivity may have been down after 2 hours of snow shoveling, but I was at least able to do all the normal activities I do at the office.

QOS is a must when using VoIP PBX or VoIP Service Providers

Friday, January 16, 2009 by Ron Pirau

If you are ever looking for an Indiana VoIP provider that provides a hosted VoIP PBX Solutions make sure that they address the issue of QOS (Quality of Service) over the WAN circuit that delivers Internet Service.  The Internet WAN circuit needs to be a dedicated circuit to the location of the VoIP switch so QOS can be set up point to point.   Many VoIP Service Providers will position that their hosted managed solution can work over any broadband Internet connection.  The hosted voice solution will work most of the time, but there will also be some troublesome times when it flat out does not work at all.  This has to do with QOS.  The voice call is very delay sensitive and when there is too much delay voice quality suffers with dropped packets and garbled messages.  The voice call is contending with downloads (ftp sessions, streaming videos).  if there is no priority given of voice over other applications there is no way that voice packets are delivered on time.   This is especially troublesome for customers who are looking for small business Server hosting or managed servers hosting because in most cases they don't have IT & telecom staff with the expertise to know how to set up QOS or why QOS matters.   The small business customers are many times subject to a bait and switch tactic to get the deal for voice with a long term goal of getting the broadband circuit business.  The VoIP service provider will set the hosted voice solution at a low cost per seat versus current service which will attract the customer to sign a contract usually for several years at what appears to be a lower cost of service.  But usually after a few months of being frustrated with the occasional voice problems the customer will switch from their broadband Internet provider to a dedicated circuit to the VoIP Service Provider they contracted service with.  This will usually be at a premium.   It's best work work with VoIP service providers who address the QOS issue up front and are honest with the customers.  

Why 24 x 7 Business Continuity is needed in todays economy

Wednesday, January 14, 2009 by Ron Pirau

How many businesses in Central Indiana can afford to maintain a staff 24x7x365 to support their IT systems?   How many businesses need 24x7x365 to remain competitive in today's always business environment?  All of them!   In order to do so many businesses are migrating to an environment that provides business continuity 24 x 7 in order to accomplish this.   Moving critical applications to managed servers hosting environment or server collocation in an Indiana Server Hosting Data Center can accomplish this.  A data center that has 24x7 network operations center staff can provide data disaster recover in the event an issue happens with one of the servers.   In additional moving to a VoIP PBX and locating in the data center using voice services from a VoIP service provide can bring an extra level of business continuity.  This type of service is not only for large Enterprise customers.  Small Business server hosting can also be done quite cost effectively.   WAN consolidation can also provide enhanced business continuity by centralizing in a data center where business applications reside.  WAN consolidation also provides considerable cost savings in many cases.    The only way this will work for companies is by using high speed Internet in Indiana.   Providers of Indiana DSL Internet, Ethernet or T1 Internet can provide this high speed Internet Connectivity.  The  data  center and managed services can provide  round the clock support in a  highly available and reliable facility at a fraction of the cost of employee staff to perform the IT support functions.   To keep businesses running 24x7 this should be a key part of a successful business strategy.

Internet Access Indiana

Tuesday, April 22, 2008 by Jack Carr
Today has been a day full of explaining how different providers actually regulate Quality of Service on your Internet Access Connections.

Not all Internet Access is the same, what do I mean by that.

What I mean is, and I am not a gamer(but in the gamer world this is paramount), but end to end performance is the key and can you really afford to have your customers waiting on data back from your web servers.  You may be sitting there saying my server is running at 5 percent utilization and my customers are calling about poor performance.

They will go somewhere else, that is why every Internet Access Provider is not the same.  Make sure you understand your needs before you go out and buy the cheapest solution.  If your goal is just surfing that is different than hosting servers.

If you can remember that end to end performance is what you are after you do find and maybe that will indirectly make your business more profitable.

Have a great day!

jack

www.lightbound.com
jcarr@iquest.net