In this day and age where everyone depends so heavily on Technology. Isn't good to have one company that can provide ITManaged Services, Server Collocation, Web Hosting Services, Virtual Storage, Storage as a Services, VoIP PBX Solutions, Hosted VoIP PBX Solutions, Voice Services and Data Services.
LightBound can provide your Cloud Services, Data Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity to your Voice and Data services including Off Site Data Backup Services.
Light Bound can be your Virtual Service Provider. We help you answer that email and return the telephone call without worry.
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.
Historically, ergo back in the days of physical servers, I often commented that Disaster Recovery in preparation of Business Continuity is much like a dog chasing its tail. Server Collocation was often employed to have backup servers at a remote location. Well, congratulations - you've just doubled your workload, not to mention increases your costs, possibly more than two-fold. So here's where I say welcome virtualization services and cloud services! Storage Area Network Solutions (SAN's) paved the way for multiple server hosts to be able to easily and seamlessly share storage, and with boot from SAN technology, you can now replicate the data, including OS and App, to another location at the block level. No muss, no fuss. No more having to manage an entire mirror of your server infrastructure. No more installing every patch twice, no more having to upgrade your applications to the next version twice. No more having to troubleshoot twice. No more having to pay for the number of licenses you need- what? You guessed it...TWICE! Good news.
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.
Learn about the next generation in storage. LightBound has partnered with Scale Computing to offer their complete, end-to-end midmarket storage solution. During this session, you will gain insight into how you can reduce costs while increasing control over your storage systems, as well as making the management of those systems more convenient. Learn more about the Scale 3-C's - COST - CONTROL - CONVENIENCE. Customers are able to build out storage clusters, starting with just 3 useable terabytes up to the multiple petabyte rnage on a single file system using commodity hardware at a shockingly affordable price!
You will also learn about LightBound Storage as a Service and Virtualization Services which are perfect for companies that need highly available and replicated shared storage to remotely backup their on-premise Scale Storage, for servers colocated at LightBound's data center, and for use with LightBound's Managed Server Services.
Infrastructure as a Service is definitely going to become a commodity offering and with economies of scale, virtual network services will be a high volume, low margin product. Cloud Services providers are already offering Hosted Virtual Server, Storage Area Network Solutions, Off Site Data Backup Services, and even Storage as a Service combined with Server Collocation for pennies on the dollar compared to legacy physical network and server infrastructures. That being said, the leading contributor to competitive advantage in the Virtualization Services and Cloud Services market is going to be how the service is differentiated from the "commodities". What are those differentiators? Depends on the customers your targeting, including their size and type of business, their vertical, and other numerous variables. In my next blog I'll talk more about how LightBound is setting itself apart with added value beyond the base Infrastructure offering.
LightBound's goal in offering Cloud Services to its customers is simple. Maintain the same level of useability and security, while adding the benefits associated with virtualization services such as high availability, scalability and flexibility with strong disaster recovery and business continuity mechanisms. LightBound is able to offer cloud services including storage as a service, network shared storage, and server virtualization services. For migration and hybrid solutions we can also bridge our existing server collocation services with all cloud services.
I just read a great article about Cloud Services. Check out this link. LightBound is a Hosted Virtual Server provider offering custom cloud services. What do I mean about in reference to custom cloud services. LightBound's cloud service offering has controls for security to meet government and industry compliance that many others don't offer. If you are looking for some more details on Virtualization Services that LightBound offers come to our Lunch and Learn on April 14, 2010 to find out more. You can register at LightBound's web site. We also offer server collocation if you want to bring in your own equipment.
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!
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 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.
LightBound, an Indiana Internet Access company, offers server collocation, data disaster recovery, and managed servers. Our Network Operations Center is manned 24x7x365. Including this holiday season, and upcoming winter weather, we will be manned constantly.
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
LightBound will be adding a third data center for server collocation before the end of the year. This is a great site for data disaster recovery. The new site will be at 800 Oliver Ave, and is located just South of 731 W. Henry Street. This new data center is about 800 square feet and will have 26 cabinets. This data center is using some new designs and technologies. First it will be powered with a separate power feed and generator from the 731 W. Henry Street data center. So if customers want some redundancy this will be a good option. Flywheel UPS technology will be deployed. This technology has advantage of being less prone to problems due to not having to maintain batteries. Hot row containment cooling will also be used in this data center. Cabinets are configured so there are two rows of cabinets with the back facing each other and enclosed on both ends of the row and all above with heat venting out. There front of cabinets are facing out. This would be a great site for WAN consolidation due to access of carriers, 24 x 7 x 365 availability as well as having seasoned WAN engineers available to monitor and support.
LightBound's server colocation stands out among the crowd. Our server collocation service includes: Individually locking cabinets, redundant power feeds, business grade service level agreement, 1500kW diesel generator, FM200 fire suppression, onsite monitoring, 24/7/365, real time utility for viewing usage statistics, DHS designated site, biometric access, and closed circuit surveillance
I met with a prospective client this week who was interested in colocation at our data center. His current povider is also his IP address provider. Unfitunately he has hard-coded his IP address with his customers VPN and is unable to change them. We offered a solution of housing his colocation servers in our data center and simply connecting to his existing carrier in our telcommuncations room. With this option he is able to keep his current IP addresses and lower is colocation costs.
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.
LightBound will be expanding to a third building for server collocation in November. Customers who desire some redundancy in data centers can house equipment in separate buildings. The new building will be at 800 Oliver Street, one half block south of 731 W. Henry Street. It will be on a separate power service and generator from the building on 731 W. Henry Street.
LightBound also offers off site off site data backup service which can add a level of redundancy to your operation. Servers at the data center can be backed up and customers with circuits at T1 level or higher can have their server data backed up at their corporate locations. The backups are done over the network between data centers at the Henry Street complex to the administrative office at 2500 E. 46th Street.
If you are looking to improve disaster recovery and business continuity LightBound has the data centers and backup services to get the job done!
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.
Lightbound will be having a customer appreciation event on June 17, 11:30 at our Lightbound data center on 731 West Henry Street. Fonality, one of the leading SMB VoIP PBX Solutions provider will be at the event presenting. Lightbound is one of the few VoIP Service Providers in the area that can directly supply SIP to Fonality's trixbox server. We will also be providing tours of our data center at this event. Lightbound's data center is a great solution for business continuity and server collocation that can be used with the Fonality solution.
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.
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