Similar feelings of sheer bliss or utter despair can also affect online retailers in any of these industries. The National Retail Federation predicts consumers will spend more on friends and family this Valentine’s Day, possibly totaling as much as $17.6 billion, with 19 percent purchasing their gift online. So depending on your IP provider and your IT Infrastructure, this Valentine’s Day could be a big win or a big bust.

For an online retailer, a one-second delay in website performance means a 7% reduction in customer conversion. Website performance optimization technologies such as TCP Acceleration, Content Delivery Networks and intelligent Internet routing techniques can dramatically improve the performance of your site.

Which technologies do you use, and how have they worked for you so far?

Did you know six of the top ten e-retailers* rely on Internap’s IT Infrastructure solutions to boost their website performance and end-user experience. Want to know more about WPO technologies? Download our Enterprise IP Buyer’s Guide Now.

*Web sales as a percentage of total sales, Internet Retailer 2011 Top 500 Guide

The amount of power consumed in a modern data center is generally incomprehensible.  One hundred MW (that’s megawatts) of power can operate just one Apple, Google, Yahoo! or Facebook data center or 80,000 average American homes.  In Internap data centers we have customers operating with 10KW of power draw in an 8’x2’x4’ locking, seismically reinforced, steel cabinet.  While that’s just 1/100^th of 1MW, it’s also eight homes worth of power in a space barely large enough for two very friendly people to stand.  In the case of our Santa Clara, Seattle, Boston, Dallas, Los Angeles and Atlanta facilities, there will be thousands of such racks.  It’s all a bit overwhelming, but it’s not a bad thing.

I won’t claim though that there isn’t a story here− there is.  It’s just not one that speaks about data center power usage as though it’s squandering natural resources.

In 2009, the primary energy use in the United States was 25,150 TWh (that’s a terawatt hour).  One terawatt hour is equal to a sustained power of approximately 114 MW for a period of one year.  Relatively speaking then, any single data center is only a very tiny blip in terms of total energy consumption.  Still, it’s impossible to argue that there aren’t impacts from energy consumption and we should be attentive to those impacts.  To that end, power consumption overall should be differentiated from a good use of power and bad use of power.  From my perspective, as someone in the data center business, providing clean power to servers is a good use of power.  Those servers power applications that impact every aspect of business today and many aspects of our personal lives.  Losing energy to inefficient equipment in the form of heat or light isn’t a good use of power.

Internap does a number of things – many of which are outlined in our green colocation eBook– to make sure that we are being responsible with how we use our resources when we build and operate a facility.  A good use of power is our focus.  And it’s a focus for the Facebooks of the world as well.  Take a look at their Open Compute Project, which touts a solution where more than 90% of all incoming power is used by servers.

If this is a focus for you too, third party verification by groups or programs like LEED, Energy Star and Green Globes, can help assure you that a data center provider is being responsible in managing their consumption of resources.

Check out our “Choosing a Green Colocation Provider” infographic for more on the standards and practices of a green facility. 

 We looked at the cloud in two parts: a platform for our software and services, and the other as a platform to serve the needs and requirements of the company.

The most important thing we found is to integrate cloud concepts early in the product development cycle. While this is a new concept by nomenclature, the technologies and the system infrastructures behind cloud computing have been evolving over several years under various names. We began to recognize we wanted to leverage this delivery mechanism, so it had to be integrated into the product development stage. Rather than having to re-tool, we can roll out new products and offerings that are based on that concept without a disruption of our whole product and services delivery timeline.

Secondly when talking about ROI for the delivery of services to the company, to get the returns we were looking for we needed to spread our deployment across the entire cloud deployment spectrum. We couldn’t take everything and put it into a Software as a Service (SaaS) model because it was cost prohibitive and it didn’t make sense for us to take our IT services and roll them to one place. So we began to look all three tiers of cloud services [Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service and SaaS] to deliver the solutions we needed for the company to operate. That allows us to spread out the risks and costs and to learn more about the different tiers as we roll out more critical services.

For more on assessing cloud risks, deriving positive ROI and overcoming barriers to the cloud, listen to the webinar instant replay.

What about you? Have you developed a method to derive ROI from your cloud implementations?

Many data center providers take a strikingly similar approach when constructing their facilities to epic proportions. These providers have a bigger-is-better mindset and build their facilities to excess in order to minimize the risk of not having enough space, power or cooling later in the data center lifecycle since it is very costly to increase capacity. According to a recent white paper written by Schneider Electric, these providers know the load requirement of the data center will increase, but this increase cannot be reliably predicted. As a result, the physical and power infrastructure of data centers is typically oversized by more than 100%, leading to increased costs passed on to the customer. As Schneider Electric writes, super sizing might work great at the drive-through, but when it comes to the physical and power infrastructure of your data center, bigger is not necessarily better.

The ideal situation, according to Schneider Electric, is to provide a method and architecture that can continuously adapt to changing requirements. The solution then is for the data center infrastructure to be provided in pre-engineered modular building blocks.

Internap believes in a holistic design approach to scalable space, power and cooling, and the ability to install a right-size system on day one. Our modular build-out process allows us to offer quality, high-availability and high-density data center services.

Have you been subjected to the “super size me” mentality? Check out a new approach to data center design that is not only more efficient, but cost-effective.

• Internap is full of seriously smart, hard-working people with 15 hours-a-day work ethics.
• MIRO and XIP™ are hot stuff, we can’t wait to use them.
• The company-owned facilities in major cities like New York, Dallas, Santa Clara, etc., are run really nicely (and they look good too).
• The Voxel brain trust and product set really ‘clinks’ with the IT platform Internap has developed.
• There is huge excitement within the company about automation, intelligent software and scalability solutions. Basically the engineers at both Voxel and Internap seem to have a lot to talk about over lunch.

One personal journey that I’m starting on is that this is the first time in 11 years that I’ve got a day-to-day boss. I’m sure I’ll have some adjustments and missteps in the process of working with a larger team, but Steve Orchard, who heads up the entire operations and service organization at Internap, is making it pretty easy so far for the guys and gals on the Voxel operations team. His team has a culture of service that I’ve found throughout Internap — one in which C-level execs all the way down to new engineers are willing and excited to roll up their sleeves, hop onto an SSH (Secure Shell) session and fix a problem or improve the experience for a customer. Internap has an engineering-based culture similar to what we’ve grown up with at Voxel and one I know our clients will appreciate. Plus, as soon I saw Steve load up PINE (Program for Internet News & Email) and rapid-fire respond to a couple dozen emails over horrendous airport WiFi in the time it took me to load up my Outlook client, I knew the guy had street cred and could relate nicely to the customers and partners that make up Voxel’s client base.

As VP, hosting operations and support, I’ve got the task of scaling up the team that provides 24/7 support for hosting and cloud customers. It’s somewhat familiar territory for me — growing a highly technical team of global engineers that help make our customers raving fans — but on a whole new scale. You can be sure I’ll be taking pro tips and leveraging the experience of the top notch NOC and customer service team that Internap has built over the years. I’ve seen the call logs and ticket reports from the NOC, and it’s pretty impressive to see how proactive and professional this group is.

Overall it’s been a great experience getting to know this new, much larger team over the past weeks. I’m excited for what we’ll be able to accomplishe with our combined resources — essentially we’ve strapped on a rocket to many of the Voxel projects that were always hampered by resources, budget or hours in the day — and we’re ready to bring even more market-leading hosting and cloud solutions to our customers at an accelerated pace. As we do so, make sure you keep in touch with us and let us know what we’re doing wrong, doing right or not doing at all — we’ll be anxious to hear your feedback.

1. Reduced Capital Costs

Instead of investing in equipment every three to five years, your IT Infrastructure becomes an operating expense (opex), reducing your up-front capital investment (capex). Plus, when the equipment breaks, needs repairs or maintenance, you don’t incur additional charges.

2. Predictable Cost Model

Managed hosting fees are billed as a monthly flat fee so you can easily predict costs, making budgeting for IT expenses simple.

3. Time Savings

The learning curve for new enterprise-level equipment is eased. You no longer need to spend time and energy to understand and manage new hardware that would typically be placed on your own network.

4. Customized Options

Managed hosting solutions aren’t “one-size-fits-all.” You customize a solution to meet the particular needs of your business. For a company with significant IT staff, many different business units and diverse technologies to support, a more customized managed hosting solution makes everyone’s lives that much easier.

5. Scalability

Managed hosting allows you to easily scale your infrastructure as your business grows. Scalability can help accelerate global expansion through a managed hosting provider with a global footprint rather than building data centers in-house, managing employees and coordinating third-party providers.

6. Technical Support

Leading managed hosting providers have a staff of skilled engineers delivering customer support. Make sure there is always a person on the phone when you need support. Check if you will receive alerts or a prompt phone call when something comes up. Knowing the provider is really keeping an eye on things frees your staff to focus on business critical issues.

7. Single Partner

With managed hosting, you don’t have to worry about managing vendor relationships for standard hardware and software. The provider handles this, and you never have to be bothered. In addition, by selecting a hosting provider that offers other services you can “future-proof” your infrastructure with the option to leverage other solutions such as colocation or cloud from a single partner.

 8. Network Availability

A managed hosting provider should be able to offer you an advanced network connection that dynamically routes your traffic over the Internet. Availability is usually expressed as a percentage of uptime in a given year. Many providers will state their availability in their Service Level Agreement (SLA) as a percentage such as 99.999 or 99.9. The difference? Two fewer nines means an average of 86 seconds more downtime every day, or 43 minutes more downtime every month. An SLA with five 9′s will ensure your network is up and running when you need it.

9. Controlled Access

A managed hosting environment offers top-notch security with limited physical access to the facility where your data and applications are housed. Some important features include 24/7 on-site guards, biometric fingerprint and retina scanners and, of course, key card and padlocked doors. Providers should be accessing your equipment through Secure Shell (SSH) or Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). This ensures that the interaction with your data is secure. You will also want to know who has access to your servers and how passwords are distributed and stored. Ask how often passwords are changed and make sure the provider always changes passwords after churn. All access to your environment should be logged as well.

Sold on managed hosting? You now have an even more important decision to make: which provider? Download our managed hosting checklist to help you get started.

1.  Since organizations are more geographically distributed, they don’t necessarily have an optimal central location in which to locate a data center and Web systems.

2. Traditional office buildings don’t always meet the cooling, power and weight requirements to house dense and heavy hardware, and retrofitting them is too expensive. Also, these buildings rarely allow for the lockdown security measures that companies want for their server rooms.

3. Colocation gives companies that are consolidating or outgrowing their internal data centers a cost-effective alternative to building new facilities.

4. Remote “lights-out” management technology makes administering remote systems easier, allowing IT staffers to reboot servers remotely.

For more information on the drivers, benefits and ROI of colocation, download our Buyer’s Guide.

*Focus Research Group

1. What level of security do your applications require?
2. What level of control and customization do you need?
3. What type of support services do you expect with your cloud solution?
4. What are your cost and flexibility expectations?
5. What stipulations will you have with respect to availability and performance?

Enterprises need to select a cloud-hosting model by evaluating each application or workload individually, as the security and customization requirements may differ greatly. For example, web content for public distribution may not need the same levels of security and control as a company’s ERP applications. Enterprises may end up leveraging both private and public cloud solutions for different initiatives or applications.

Regardless of your particular deployment, it is imperative to select a solution that delivers an enhanced end-user experience and superior availability. From the cloud to the end user, Internap will help you identify and deploy the best solutions for your business needs. Download our decision brief, “Cloud Hosting: Public or Private,” to help get a clear idea of your cloud requirements.

Hmmm, it got me to thinking, in my family alone, we have nearly 20 devices on the Internet and the pace is growing rapidly as we consume terabytes of storage.  The next generation of cars and appliances are all connected to the Internet, so yes, the devices are coming and with it a tsunami of data and computing demands.

As IT leaders, we will need more options and flexibility than ever before.  As we explore and adopt cloud in its various forms and better understand how to utilize managed and dedicated hosting, we can prepare for the future.  We need to be ready to support new roles such as Data Scientists. We also need to have computing on demand and flexible storage solutions – not to mention new analytical capabilities to sort through the mountains of data.

If exploring and adopting new forms of computing isn’t on your road map today, I would encourage you to look to the not so distant future and ask yourself: are you ready to lead your company in a world that has 50 billion devices connected to the Internet?

Internap has been pioneering IT Infrastructure services for well over a decade and with our recent acquisition of Voxel, we offer you vastly greater choices for IT platform flexibility and performance. To learn more visit the Internap + Voxel page.

You see the Internet has millions of packets of information traveling across its many information highways, just like Atlanta has hundreds of thousands of commuters traveling its highways, and sometimes things get bogged down. But unlike Atlanta travelers who have to sit through a traffic jam, companies that depend on the Internet for their business can turn to technologies such as TCP Acceleration or Intelligent Route Control (IRC) to speed things up and get around the blockages the Internet inevitably presents.

TCP Acceleration works to speed delivery of applications by up to four times, ultimately improving the end-user experience, just like traveling in the fast lane  might get me to work a few minutes quicker. IRC technology avoids the traffic jams and chooses the best possible route around delays− sort of like being able to weave in and out of traffic like a race car driver or drive down the shoulder (which I have considered). Using these two technologies in combination delivers a better online experience for website users. It’s just too bad they can’t do much for Atlanta traffic.

Looking for a way around Internet slow-downs and obstacles? Read how Beyond Nines uses Internap’s Accelerated IP service (XIP™) in conjunction with our Managed Internet Route Optimizer™ (MIRO) technology to provide enhanced services that help its customers maximize fund-raising systems. Download the case study now.