Recently in data center Category

Speaking with Peter Davis, Partner Channel Manager in the Southeast for XO, about MPLS and HIPAA. XO recently held a webinar describing how their MPLS Solution can enable healthcare organizations to be HIPAA compliant.

The wording here is important. Transport is neither compliant or not. It is the end devices and users that must be HIPAA compliant. In other words, how the data is handled end-to-end has to be compliant, not the pieces and parts. 

When speaking with Hospital HIPAA Administrators it is important to remember that part of compliance is security and part is procedure. The procedure part has to do with how all medical records (physical and virtual) are handled and secured, whether on-premise, in transit, at a data center, ona  server or in a file cabinet.

With off-site data storage, the best solution for access is a private line, a Layer 2 VPN, or an MPLS network. Why? Segmentation of traffic. Security of data flow. Less chance for a lapse in security. 

The data needs to be securely stored and backed up. EMR firms have to sell a fairly expensive proposition due to all the safeguards and redundancy that goes with accessing medical records from a remote server. 

In many ways, the telecom agent can sell numerous pieces of the puzzle through XO (or other carriers or VAR's). 

• The transport - private line, metro Ethernet, Layer 2 VPN, or MPLS.
• The data center - collocation for servers and networking gear
• Data storage and backup

HIPAA is more involved with procedures in place (and to be followed) on the storage, access and security of medical records  than on the technology used to secure, store or transport those same medical records.

If you are looking for more info on MPLS, XO has an MPLS video series on YouTube and TCA has a stored webinar for its members on its website.

I'm in Atlanta speaking at the Microcorp One-on-One event about Trends in 2010. The three trends that I see for agents are the following: Applications, Quality of Service (QOS), and Mobile Broadband (MBB). But they are kind of inter-dependent. Ubiquious broadband leads to innovative uses and applications. Applications like on smartphones lead to a greater need for mobile broadband networks.

Mobile Broadband is growing. Smartphones are replacing cellular handsets. Social networks are moving to mobile devices so people can Facebook and Tweet. RIM's Blackberry brought us mobile email, but it is a standard on many phones now. Netbooks and data cards are presenting the US cellular companies with some fits. They like the additional revenue, but have to keep dropping billions on the network backhaul and capacity upgrades. (And another $45B+ on the upgrade to LTE/4G).

All this means that there are new uses for the mobile broadband, like the Kindle. Sprint's Wispernet allows Amazon to instantly download books, magazines, newspapers and blogs to Kindle devices. Machine-to-machine devices can utilize the cellular data network to provide connectivity for ATM machines, security cameras, and a host of other devices that need to communicate with a NOC or remote server.

All of this is a cycle of applications driving network usage. Ubiquious broadband driving more apps. It's one reason that the FCC needs to maintain open network and Net Neutrality guidelines in place.

Applications - like email, databases, office suites, CRM - are creating a demand for managed services, such as an outsourced IT department. In addition, businesses are looking at the Cloud - moving applications to a data center for redundancy, security, and availability - as a way to save money and stop worrying about the IT department. With applications being delivered in the Cloud or by way of SAAS or even Virtualization, Agents have a chance to offer more than just Internet Access or WAN circuits, like private line. Agents can sell Layer 2 to Layer 7 - pipe to apps. It's a way to get deeper into accounts. It's a way to offer a complete solution. It's a way to deliver on the label of Trusted Advisor.

Applications are driving sales. Voice and email are just the primary apps. Business critical data is also driving mobile broadband. Ubiquious broadband is allowing for innovative ways of accessing data. The problem becomes reliable access to the data. That's where Quality of Service comes in. QOS on the WAN is what is needed to access data reliably and quickly. The MPLS trigger is the Class of Service reliability and prioritization of data over the network. This is paramount for businesses running a truly converged network with video, database, VoIP, email and Internet riding the same pipes. WAN Optimization is selling due to the cost containment and the performance enhancement. Big bang for the buck.

So the agents can sell mobile broadband, applications via Virtualization or SAAS, and add QOS to the WAN to provide reliable access to these business critical data.

My buddy, Derek Thompson, just started at Fishnet Security. Besides peddling Bluecoat and SonicWall Managed Services, he is also selling WAN Optimization. While I have heard of this, I had no idea what it was or how it worked. So Derek invited me to sit down with Doug Kruger of Riverbed. Doug explained it simply enough.

One reason companies consider WAN optimization is if the company needs more bandwidth. It may not need more bandwidth, it may just need to better utilize the Internet Access it already has.

Multi-location companies sometimes have servers at each branch instead of consolidating the servers in one data center. This saves money on maintenance and storage, but in some cases may mean a bigger pipe to access the servers in real-time from the data center.

By consolidating servers into one location can save on manpower, maintenance, and data storage/back-up costs. This is also the sales trigger for Virtualization and Cloud Computing. Save on hardware, labor and storage.

TCP and latency are other reasons that companies buy bigger pipe, when perhaps they could just optimize the current WAN connections (or change to MPLS pipes instead of DIA or dedicated Internet access circuits at each location). TCP is not the most efficient protocol, but it works, just sometimes creating excess packet traffic across the WAN.  Latency for real-time applications is also a real problem across the Internet. Lastly, many applications, including Microsoft Office, create excess traffic on the WAN when any document is being opened. 

One of the ways that companies like Riverbed optimize the WAN is to eliminate duplicate data traffic. It's called De-Dupe and the effect is to eliminate up to 80% of traffic across the WAN. WANO technology usually will work on eliminating all the excess packet traffic on the WAN, which will usually result in a bandwidth savings. 

Riverbed tweeks TCP headers to modify the TCP window sizing issue. The tech here gets beyond me and my discussion, but by modifying the TCP packet headers much of the TCP "noise" on the WAN is cut down. By diminishing the excess packet traffic from apps and TCP, WAN optimization technology is able to save a lot of bandwidth. 

Riverbed also works on application latency in a similar vein, by the mitigation of excess packet traffic from apps like Microcosft Office. The technology guesses what the application will ask for and deliver it all at once instead of in 20 different packet streams. Many Fortune 5000 companies use WAN Optimization due mainly to cost cutting force on them by the economy. Data is business critical, so any way that you can save money on the WAN is a good thing.

This is an interesting way to market a Data Center: Carpathia Hosting is using an e-book!

• Data Center of the Future: the Introduction
• Chapter 1: Security, Privacy and Risk Management
• Chapter 2:Monitoring, Management & Service Frameworks
• Chapter 3: Datacenter Optimization Services - coming soon!

Because broadband is so slow in the states, Amazon has resorted to allowing companies to mail in their portable devices for data storage and upload. According to Cloudave, it could take "82 days (with 1.54 Mbps T1 connection) to migrate one terabyte of data with 80% network utilization."  So "Amazon has resorted to old fashioned approach from the previous eras. Users can mail Amazon their data in one of the supported portable storage devices and Amazon will transfer it to users' AWS account from within Amazon's high speed internal network."  Sad really.

In case you didn't hear Oracle bought Sun. Open Source folks are worried and so are Sun customers.

Nuvox opened a new 5,000 square foot data center at 421 West Church Street in Jacksonville FL, which is THE telecom hotel in that city.

Rackspace hired Robert Scoble.

Data Vault in Miami was flooded last night according to a telecom source in South Florida.

Host.net/WV Fiber is opening a new data center in Nashville. It was announced yet but I ended up with a spec sheet in my email -- not from the company though.
This is the second data center that I have heard of being built in Nashville (I can't remember who the other is).

DataSite in Orlando signed a 15-rack first client in February. It was opened just after Progress Energy raised power rates by more than a third.

According to Jeff Hinkle at Atlanta NAP, most of the transactions are medium sized businesses and larger looking for rack space.

I am told that Terramark is doing well selling virtualization. WBS Connect is launching a virtualization service soon.

Virtualization, Cloud Computing, Managed Servers, Collocation, and Dedicated Servers are all the rage because the workforce is mobile (or distributed as in virtual office and tele-workers) and businesses have to do more with less staff - so outsource, SAAS, hosted email, hosted apps, and managed services to  leverage available skills.

Robert Half interviewed 1400 CIO's for a research study (press release here), It's not a surprising list: Security, VOIP, Virtualization, SAAS, and data center efficiency. Considering power costs much more than space, getting energy and hardware efficient means cost savings. Oh, wait, that's virtualization too. And Software as a service and VOIP. 

In summary, the top tech investments of CIO of companies with 100 or more employees is IT Security and cost cutting initiatives.

On Twitter this morning, Josh wrote, "Widely discussed leaked doc, Open Cloud Manifesto, originally authored by IBM - http://bit.ly/cloudmanifesto - could be historic".

"The buzz around cloud computing has reached a fever pitch. Some believe it is a disruptive trend representing the next stage in the evolution of the internet. Others believe it is hype, as it uses long established computing technologies. As with any new trend in the IT world, organizations must figure out the benefits and risks of cloud computing and the best way to use this technology."

Everyone knows the upside to Cloud Computing, but the document explains the downside. Number 1 being Security. Compliance isn't listed, but I would think that it might be an issue, especially if security, management and governance are an issue.

IBM signs off by stating, "This document is meant to begin the conversation, not define it." More at www.opencloudmanifesto.org

It's amazing the news feed you can get from Twitter.

Broadband Stimulus Plan: High-Speed Access coming to Rural America

Ask our CIO about our UC implementation at Aspect on a Frost & Sullivan webinar tomorrow:

Telefonica, Microsoft Offer Windows Live Services to Latin America

AboveNet is connecting 4 Telx facilities in NY/NJ

Recession is slowing the Death of Dial-Up.

RackSpace is using the Green label to market its hosting service. (IPO's will do that to you).

Apparently, BPL is still a viable option. Go figure.

This is all in about an hour. There's a lot going on. How are you keeping up with the Industry?

Rapid Link, Inc. opens a 3000 square foot data center north of Atlanta at Spaghetti Junction in Doraville, GA.  Rapid Link's data center will have access via fiber and wireless.The first customers will be moving into the space in January, 2009.

If you are a telecom agent looking to sell collocation, Rapid Link is looking for you. please contact Kris Maher, Director of National Sales, at 800-363-3435