Why bundling Business Internet services is critical for ensuring business continuity
With modern businesses becoming progressively reliant on the Internet, ensuring business continuity is becoming a major operational priority. Just as businesses understand the importance of manning the phone during business hours, assuring internal systems remain connected and operational is essential to a company’s success. So, what does it mean to ensure business continuity? Furthermore, how can you guarantee business continuity? This article will walk you through the whats, whys, and hows, and ultimately explain why bundling your business Internet services is a critical part of your overall business continuity plan.
What is Business Continuity?
By literal definition, “Business continuity is the result of proper execution of Business continuity planning and Disaster recovery.” Essentially, this means that your business will continue to operate regardless of potential outside disruptions. For example, if a massive rainstorm comes through your area and knocks out your company’s primary terrestrial Internet circuit, will your company still be able to operate without an Internet connection? If so, great – you have a proper business continuity plan in place; business is able to continue as usual. If not, it’s time to reevaluate, and make a plan. For details on the specifics that go into creating an overall successful business continuity plan, check out our blog post on Disaster Recovery Planning.
If we focus specifically on how to safeguard businesses’ telecom services, having true network redundancy, quick access to support, and routine systems backups all become essential.
How Network Redundancy is Vital to Business Continuity
When a network is truly redundant, it rarely, if ever, experiences a real or perceived outage. Instead, it’s engineered to failover to an alternative or backup connection when the primary fails (and so forth). A truly redundant network should integrate both air and ground technologies, such as a fixed wireless circuit and a fiber circuit. This prevents a single point of failure from potentially wiping out both circuits running through the same conduit.
Past that, it’s wise to have connections from multiple providers so again, if one experiences a network-wide outage, you can failsafe to the others’. However, the concept of managing multiple telecom contracts would make most bang their head against a wall (isn’t dealing with one major telco enough of a headache?!) Good news – there is a solution. Onboard your services with an aggregator, such as GeoLinks, so you can have multiple connections all managed by a single provider.
Benefits of Bundling Business Internet Services with a Single Provider
One Point of Contact for Project Management
Do you have a multi-location business? Project management can be an absolute nightmare. Office A may only have access to one telecom, while office B has access to another. Now you’re juggling not just one, but two providers. Want to have a backup circuit? We may be talking about juggling three or four at this point. When you onboard with an aggregator – a telecom who has wholesale agreements with other providers – they do the juggling for you. That way you only have to deal with one project management team.
One Point of Contact for Support
Having a problem with your network? Telecom companies are infamous for the blame game. It’s not me, it’s them. This consequently forces the client to call hop between, once again, multiple carriers. When you bundle with an aggregator, that headache and responsibility falls onto your provider to handle – behind the scenes. You, the client, then only have to work with a single point of contact, regardless of the issue!
One Bill
Past ensuring you have a redundant Internet connection, consider where you’re getting your other business services, like VoIP for example. Bundling with a single telecom provider condenses all of your business services onto a single bill. Trust us, your accounting team will thank you.
What Business Telecom Services should you bundle?
To ensure true business continuity, experts suggest bundling at least two Internet circuits, fixed wireless (air) and fiber (ground), and your business VoIP services. If you choose to onboard VoIP services, and have a redundant network, you’re assuring your business phone services stay connected when you need them most. Now, where do you find that magic aggregator?
Enter GeoLinks:
By cross-connecting with every major network in the country, GeoLinks provides truly redundant business Internet services. Understanding the importance of business continuity, GeoLinks offers business customers the ultimate IT disaster prevention plan – the GeoLit Bundle. Combining Flexible FiberOptic (wholesaled fiber managed by GeoLinks in-house), ClearFiber™ (GeoLinks’ proprietary fixed wireless network), and Hosted Voice services, the GeoLit Bundle streamlines and manages a businesses’ most important IT services. The result? Business continuity and peace of mind! Backed by a carrier-grade service level agreement (SLA), more and more businesses are getting GeoLit every day.
Yes, You Should Bundle Business Internet Services
All-in-all, today’s digital landscape is getting increasingly complicated and more robust. Day-to-day business operations and the rise of IoT are demanding more and more from our networks. Simultaneously, crowding of the airwaves and unavoidable natural disasters are becoming commonplace. To protect your business, it’s critical to have a disaster prevention and recovery plan in place. Bundling your business Internet services with a single telecom provider, specifically an aggregator, ensures effective and manageable business continuity.
