No Backup

What would you do if you realized that there was no internet for the next couple of days? Panic? Hyperventilate? Postulate about how the world is coming to a devastating end with an apocalypse led by zombies? A fiber optic cable was cut by vandals a couple weeks ago in Arizona and left thousands without internet. The infrastructure has some huge vulnerabilities. Because Internet service is largely unregulated by the federal government and the states, decisions about network reliability are left to service providers. Industry analysts say these companies generally do not build alternative routes, or redundancies, unless they believe it is worthwhile financially. This means that most smaller cities and rural areas do not have a backup system if one of the internet routes fails. To be honest, it is to everyone's advantage to have backup. Internet phones are overtaking landlines and they are more cost efficient. The FCC says about half the rural U.S. lacks access to high-speed Internet service. It plans to distribute about $20 billion over the next five years to support rural broadband, but it does not require recipients to build network backup systems against outages. Should there be more regulation at least over the infrastructure?

Great Things About the Cloud

Cloud services can really be the best thing that ever happened to your business. Some of the best aspects about the services is that you can back up and store data there. The data will be automatically backed up so you do not have to worry about losing data anymore. There is usually customer support that comes with the back ups and it all adds up to your business saving money on in-house servers and IT professionals. You can also use the cloud in your business for email. This will enable synchronization for all calendars as well as easy collaboration. The cloud can also be used for web site hosting. This means that you will be spending less on web development because it offers tools to create the site and even templates. The updates and customer services will also be right at your finger tips as well. Cloud services are much more useful for businesses than it was ever imagined. In the long run it will pay for itself because of the increased productivity and efficiency while decreasing the costs of running your business and saving you time.