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By selecting enterprise hosting and internet service providers who will understand and work with your business closely to service its specific needs, many common cost/efficiency compromises can be avoided for a more collaborative and interactive experience. It comes down to knowledge of the business, service level agreement (SLA) terms, and data interaction.

Hosting and dedicated internet service (DIS) 

Hosting services are often directly associated with web hosting alone when, fundamentally, they are used to store and manage any data for access via the internet. This covers everything technical for an enterprise from email and phone systems to DNS servers.

Accessing this data is then a matter of selecting the internet service provider (ISP) who will offer the most effective and efficient service to your enterprise. For many, this is where dedicated internet service (DIS) comes in, a private connection between a business and the internet. By opting out of a public connection, where the internet connection is shared through a single cable with everyone in a given area, the competition for bandwidth is removed. This helps ensure optimal performance during critical business operations.

There is no cookie-cutter service plan for every enterprise, and all too often compromises must be made in order to gain on either cost or efficiency. By selecting hosting and internet service providers who will understand and work with your business closely to service its specific needs, many of these compromises can be avoided for a more collaborative and interactive experience. It comes down to knowledge of the business, service level agreement (SLA) terms, and data interaction.

Enterprise operations knowledge and management

Whether hosting or internet service providers can offer your enterprise the most efficient service for little-to-no compromise depends on how well they’re willing to understand your business operations. For example, a warehouse open from 7 to 4, Monday to Friday, uses significantly less internet and bandwidth in the evening and on weekends. A standard provider may offer one connection speed, 24 hours, 7 days a week, but at what cost? In other words, why incur the costs of maintaining business-hour internet speed and connectivity for more simple, routine, after-hours tasks?

By taking time to assess the functions and specific service requirements of your enterprise, a service provider can help make sure you don’t pay for more than what you need. DIS for off-hours management of backups and updates, for instance, can burst to the cloud or increase connection speed in response to these tasks, perhaps even charging by the hour – as is becoming increasingly common. In this way, an enterprise can pay for after-hours connection needs as dedicated services, rather than paying the same high cost for internet services around the clock.  The more a provider understands about your business, the more tailored the services they offer can become.

Service level agreement (SLA) analysis

A service provider can demonstrate knowledge of an enterprise through the service level agreement (SLA). The SLA between a provider and a client outlines the details and limitations of the offered service. It includes aspects such as the quality of the service, as well as the availability and responsibilities of the provider, which both client and provider must agree upon. How well the terms of an SLA collaborate with business operations demonstrates how profoundly a service provider understands and is able to best accommodate the specificities of the business.

Although providers focus on its scarcity, downtime happens. For this reason, established responsibilities in the face downtime and disaster recovery are key to a solid SLA. To avoid unnecessary cost and inconvenience, a business needs providers who will tackle issues head-on. This means fixing the problem first, and working out the political details of the incident once the job is done. In other words, avoiding overly-standardized SLAs is an important step in selecting providers. This includes remaining vigilant with middleman-managed service providers (MSPs) reselling those cookie-cutter services along with associated standard SLAs. Without clearly established, specific responsibilities in an emergency situation, business technical leaders can find themselves stuck in a web of back-and-forth waitlisting and incident reports. Ensuring an SLA is suited for your enterprise makes all the difference.

Data interaction – cutting out the middleman

To avoid this unnecessary web and complexity, especially during an emergency, enterprises can opt for service providers who physically own the space and servers involved in the service plan, thereby cutting out middleman resellers altogether. This allows direct contact with those who manage the data, knowledge of data location and in turn, more data interaction. It comes down to maintaining a level of awareness and control over your data and services in preparation for the worst.

Our 7Clouds  ISP partner - Cogent - for example, is among the top 5 ranking ISPs in the world,  servicing 22% of the world’s internet backbone on their dedicated, non-oversubscribed network. Combining this power with our main infrastructure located in the heart of NYC allows us to provide our most direct and reliable internet connection.

7Clouds -  Contact us today to set your business up with the dedicated internet service it needs.

References

Brooke Hayes, Do you Need a Dedicated Internet Connection for your Business? April 2019.
Philipp Wieder, Joe M. Butler, Wolfgang Theilmann, and Ramin Yahyapour, Service Level Agreements for Cloud Computing. 2011.
Images: Pixabay