Jay Sachetti joined Jeff O’Brien, partner at Husch Blackwell and Dyanne Ross-Hanson, president of Exit Planning Strategies talked about the market for mergers and acquisitions, exit planning opportunities for companies that don’t end up for sale and how companies can maximize their eventual sale price during an early October panel at the first Upsize on Tap event at Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul.
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
business builder data centers
by Mike Hastings
Most business owners have heard people talk about having their server in a data center. You may have heard the terms co-location facility or Web hosting center but you don’t exactly know what they mean.
Simply put, a data center is a facility designed to house computer servers with high-speed access to the Internet. Computer Internet servers have special requirements such as climate control, consistent electricity, security and high-speed network connections. But why should you care about this?
First, you could use your Internet server to generate more revenue for your company. This is done by creating an e-commerce Web site where everyone on the Internet can come to buy your products and services. Examples range from online retail giant Amazon’s site to local companies such as www.hometime.com, which sells products online for home improvement, remodeling and repair.
You could also use your Internet server for internal employee communications. Imagine all your sales reps, while they are on the road, logging into your database on your secure Internet server using their Web browser to get information about your customers, your products, production schedules, prospect lists and so on.
You could use this same secure server for your employees to “punch” their online timecards, coordinate and schedule meetings, or send internal memorandums. Managers could review and approve online project plans and schedules. You could have employees working at home, from customer sites or from your branch offices.
Your customer communications could be greatly enhanced with a secure server in a data center. This is also true of communications to your vendors. For example, we have a client whose company creates private and sensitive data for each of their customers. This company’s CEO used to personally fly this data to each of their customer’s headquarters to present and deliver it.
Now they make this information available to their customers via their database/Web site using the Internet but only if the customer has the security codes to get at the data. Their customers get the information in a more timely manner and the company can take on more customers since the CEO can spend more time in the office directing the preparation of the sensitive data.
Other information to communicate via an Internet server: up-to-the- minute information on production schedules for their orders, 24/7 quality control information, delivery schedules, invoicing information and a mechanism for their customers to provide feedback to the company. All of these same mechanisms could be used for communication with your company’s vendors.
Around the clock
Now you see some possibilities for enhancing your business with an Internet server, but why do you need a data center? As you begin generating revenue and performing other mission-critical tasks with your Internet server, you may soon realize that you need this server in a secure environment with high-speed access to the Internet and you will need this server up and running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. These are the characteristics you get when you rent or lease server space in a data center.
The place to start looking for your data center options is with your current Internet Service Provider. Most ISPs also have a data center offering. Some of the things you should look for in a data center are continuous Internet connectivity with bandwidth to burn, a climate-controlled environment, uninterrupted power, facility security, 24/7 monitoring and technical support, and comprehensive backup.
To get continuous Internet connectivity with bandwidth to burn, the data center should have multiple and diversely routed connections to the Internet backbone. These are usually high-speed fiber optic connections to maximize speed and performance for your Internet traffic. Industrial strength routers should be used at every point in the data center’s network and they should provide redundancy that makes routing or network outage virtually impossible.
A high-capacity, precision climate control system ensures that all equipment and Internet servers in the data center will operate under optimal temperature, humidity and airflow conditions.
If your Internet server is to be available for your users 24/7 it is important that your data center can provide uninterrupted power. All systems should be backed up and protected by a UPS system in case the power supply is cut off.
The UPS system (a fancy name for a battery backup) can typically provide power for up to several hours. Therefore, it is also important that some kind of a generator can take over and supply all necessary power in case of an extended power outage. The backup generator should also be able to supply power for the cooling systems and the security systems.
Facility security should be provided by a state-of-the-art security system. At a minimum, the security system should protect the data center with entry monitoring devices and security cameras, motion and infrared detectors, and smoke detection. Access should be restricted all day, every day and there should be immediate notification to data denter personnel and the proper authorities.
The data center technical support staff should be monitoring all systems in the data center around the clock. Computer-aided diagnostic tools are often used to head off serious problems by reporting the status of internal systems and alerting technicians. Inquire into the monitoring tools that are being used by the data center you are interested in.
The data center should provide you with the option of daily incremental and full weekly backups of your data. This is important if your server was to ever die a horrible death and you need to get your information online again as soon as possible. Typically, your backup data is transferred over a secure link to a set of backup devices and most often the data is written to some form of backup tapes. The tapes should be stored in a secure, environmentally controlled facility that protects your data and enables fast, easy retrieval.
For most companies, renting or leasing space in a data center is an overwhelmingly cost-effective alternative to developing and maintaining these functions yourself. You can get an Internet server into a data center for as little as $100 or $200 per month. Most data centers will charge you a constant price for the space in their facility and then they will charge you separately for the amount of Internet bandwidth that your server uses. Make sure that you understand all the charges and costs before you sign a contract.
