Businesses that have the potential to be affected in some way by natural disasters can avoid the complete standstill to their services by preparing and planning out just what they would do if their facility suffered a catastrophic loss. Hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, snow storms, flooding, and fire are some of the most obvious causes of potentially disastrous losses that could halt the operations of a business.

In fact, the property of a business does not even have to have any direct damage for a natural disaster to halt their business. For example, loss of electricity, telephone, or internet connectivity can cause problems with functionality, as those services are paramount. If you understand that any type of disaster could destroy your computing infrastructure – where all of your company records and data are stored, which could quite possibly destroy your business – then you should have a plan in place to alleviate that possibility.

Off-Site Backups

At the very least, any business that uses computing to manage their operations should have an off-site back-up of their most important data and records. This is not a very expensive strategy, it is something that can be entirely automated, and it does not even need to be accessed until you actually need to use it. There are automated back-up systems available from most data centers, which back-up your data as frequently as you desire. The incremental changes made in the time-frame chosen are then sent across the internet through an encrypted protocol, and stored in a managed backup system at the data center. Usually, the client is provided with a secure web interface to access those files as needed. These backups can also be used to restore individual data files that may have become deleted or damaged at any time, and downloaded back to the computers in your office.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

The next step up from simply backing-up your data for protection from a disaster would be hosting some, to all, of your regular computing infrastructure in a data center. This type of solution is known as Infrastructure as a Service or IaaS. If you hosted your main office server in a data center and accessed your files over the internet from the PCs in your office, you could survive a disaster from a computing standpoint. All of your important data could then be accessed from a temporary, remote location, or even by having your employees work from home until the office is re-established.

Many companies are now hosting their entire computing infrastructure in a data center; everything from virtual PCs to their application servers. These can then be accessed through just about any device that is connected to the internet, such as a PCs and smartphones.

Email and Phone

Communicating with your customer base during and after any disaster is vital in many cases. When your email and telephone systems are cut off, and you and your customers can no longer communicate, this could be extremely damaging to your business. By hosting your email server at a data center, you have access to your email system through almost any device connected to the internet.

Another popular data center service is VOIP-based hosted phone systems. In a VOIP-based system, the PBX system normally nailed to the wall in an office is replaced by a PBX server in a data center. Management and administration of the system is then done though a web interface. All phone communication is channeled through voice over Internet protocol (VOIP). The advantage of this in a disaster is that your phone system is always intact. You can access your administration portal over the Internet and change any settings that may be necessary, such as adding additional extensions for remote users. Staff members can work from remote locations or at home, by accessing the phone system with a softphone on their PC or by having their calls transferred from their extensions to their cell phones.

TurnKey Internet’s Data Center

Data centers are the ideal solution to the issues surrounding disaster recovery. The key reason is that they have multiple redundancies in place to provide 100% up-time guarantees. At TurnKey Internet, we have multiple fiber providers supplying our internet and bandwidth through diverse physical paths into our data center. We have state-of-the-art networking equipment in place to maintain your connections, in case one or some of the fiber connections coming into the facility are disrupted.

Additionally, our power supply is backed-up with both a robust battery back-up supply (UPS) to all servers and equipment, as well as dual on-site diesel generators that can power our data center long-term if necessary. For these reasons and more, anyone considering disaster recovery planning should consider the options available from TurnKey Internet, to insure that their business is not damaged long-term by a catastrophic event that had not been planned for.

To get started, visit https://www.turnkeyinternet.net/myplan for a FREE consultation.

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Many online business owners make the mistake of overlooking the importance of having a fast website. When you want to get the most from your online presence, the loading speed of your content is one of the most important factors to your success. Your prospects have a lot of distractions fighting for their attention, and you must compete with their friends, family and other advertisers if you want to make any progress.

Web users don’t have much tolerance for slow websites, and most will navigate away if your content takes longer than a few seconds to appear on the screen. So every step that you take to increase your website’s performance will help you attract and retain customers, and you are about to learn how to get moving down the right path.

Content Delivery Network

One of the benefits of working online is that you can reach a worldwide audience, and doing so is one of the best ways to enhance your profitability. But when someone downloads your content or accesses your website, the speed at which the content loads will depend on that person’s location. For example, if your hosting server is located in New York, someone who lives in China will encounter delays when trying to access your website.

If your prospects are forced to wait too long, they will often opt to find a local business that can offer them efficient download speeds. You can overcome that problem by using a content delivery network, or CDN. When you have a CDN, your content is stored on several servers around the world. When someone accesses your website or tries to download a file, the CDN will send the files to them from the server that is closest to that person’s location.

Reduce Image Size

When crafting great content, including valuable and engaging information is not always enough when you need to attract readers and to keep their attention. When you want to keep your audience’s focus, including images is a great way to reach your desired outcome.

But having too many images on your website can impact the loading speed in a negative way, causing you to lose prospects. Although many people try to remove most of the images from their website, doing so is not your only option. You can try converting your images to a web format to reduce their size without harming their quality.

Check Your Scripts

You can find many scripts that will help you captivate and engage your audience, but using too many of them can decrease the loading speed of your website. If you want to speed it up, take a look at each plug-in to determine if you need it and how much it is impacting your site. Disable one script at a time to determine if the changes make a difference in the amount of time that it takes for your content to load. If one of your scripts is causing a lot of harm, consider removing it, but you can also check to see if the developer has released any updates.

Upgrade Your Hosting

If you have tried everything of which you can think to improve your loading speed, then you might want to take a look at your hosting provider. If you have a basic plan, then you might not have access to the amount of bandwidth and resources that you need to improve the speed with which your audience can access your content.

If your hosting plan is the source of the problem, then you might want to upgrade to a better hosting solution, such as a dedicated server, or even a better provider. Although you likely wish to avoid spending more money than needed, the enhanced speed of an effective hosting plan is an investment that will pay for itself over time.

Those who don’t take steps to optimize their website’s loading speed are likely losing more customers than they realize, and you don’t want to repeat the same mistake. Putting in a little effort can go a long way when it comes to keeping your prospects engaged and focused on what you have to say. Optimizing your website is a good place to start when you want to make your content load with enhanced efficiency. But if that step does not help, then upgrading your hosting plan or provider is sure to get the job done.

When your website loads quickly, your customers’ experience will not be interrupted, and they will be that much more likely to make a purchase as a result. The speed with which your content loads is also a reflection of you and your products. When you prevent delays, you are also showing your customers that you care about your reputation, and you will start to earn their respect.

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Cloud computing, or simply “The Cloud,” has become increasingly popular for businesses, even while many industry leaders continue to waffle about exactly how it should be defined. The basic consensus is that cloud computing is ubiquitous, offering resources to many users at a time, over the Internet. It doesn’t matter where geographically the programs or applications themselves reside because they are all plugged into the cloud. Everything is available remotely, from anywhere, and best of all, it offers infinite scalability. The cloud can grow as big as you need it to be, quickly, without any interruption of service.

Infrastructure-as-a-Service

A major reason why cloud computing has grown in popularity is the rise of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). Numbered are the days of building your own on-site or in-office server room. With IaaS solutions, your company’s data and IT infrastructure lives in the cloud, making it remotely accessible to multiple users with instant scalability. You’re also provided with peace of mind, knowing that your data is being stored in a secure, redundantly powered, high speed internet-connected facility. There are many benefits that IaaS offers compared to hosting your own IT infrastructure on-site, such as higher up-time, increased network performance, lower cost of operation, and superior capacity expandability.

Designed for Mobility

The face of business has changed into an on-demand environment. Mobile workers need access now, clients need access now, and your sales staff need access now. To add to the ever-increasing operational tempo of the modern business’s communications needs, you now have an increasing mobile factor where multiple locations, road warriors, and clients can span the globe all needing high speed access to your data. With IaaS solutions, you get massive high speed access at speeds 1,000x that of a typical office cable internet connection — ideal for the mobile and growing demands placed on the IT infrastructure of businesses today.

Eliminating Downtime While Cutting Costs

In a world dictated by 24/7 always-available service, being down for minutes or an hour can spell disaster. Imagine having your entire organizations IT infrastructure down for a day or a week, while the power or cable lines to your building are disrupted? Imagine power-loss during a typical summer storm disrupting mobile work forces and remote sales opportunities from accessing your servers? By leveraging IaaS solutions, your IT infrastructure has multiple redundant internet connections, with continuous power provided by UPS backup systems and generators for emergency backups.

You could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, to have the same up-time capabilities of the enterprise grade power and internet systems in your own office location. The fiber optic lines, connecting to major network hubs at speeds in excess of 1,000x that of a typical office cable internet connection can cost over $50,000 a month – for just a single connection point. Add in redundancy to your office, and you could be spending millions a year for a high speed redundant Internet pipe at the same speeds you have access to for fractions of the cost with a IaaS solution.

Focus on your Business, not your Infrastructure

At the end of the day, the overall benefit of cloud computing and IaaS is that they allow your to focus more on your business, and not your infrastructure. To learn more about cloud computing and IaaS, visit TurnKeyInternet.net to speak with a Cloud Solutions specialist.

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