WiredRE Continues to Move Data Centers - Partnership With Five Universities In Massachusetts

MIT, Northeastern University, Boston University, the University of Massachusetts and Harvard University are collaborating on an exciting project called the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC).  One of the goals of this project is to implement high efficiency systems and use state-of –the-art power distributions and cooling which will make it LEED certified.  The innovative technology of the data center will ensure that power is used only by the applications that require them.

In order to implement a project of this scale, the consortium required reliable data center research in a short period of time.  Wired Real Estate Group was brought in to help the partners meet tight timelines and provide critical data that wasn’t available from traditional advisory firms.

Everett Thompson, CEO of Wired Real Estate Group likened the project to power plants rather than traditional real estate.  Since data centers are highly specialized, long-term, fixed assets.  This project provided the WiredRE group an opportunity to showcase its research and singular focus on the data center market.

WiredRE recently expanded its research team to include Lisa Huff, a long-time data center industry analyst with a strong background in optical engineering.  Lisa is Data Center Certified and is a sought after industry expert.  For More information about WiredRE, the MGHPCC initiative, visit www.wiredre.com.

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Why Businesses Should NOT Choose Cable

Cable is basically a one way street, most of the bandwidth goes TO the customer, uploads are slow. That includes outbound email, web servers, VPN to home users, VoIP to home users or other business sites, backup files, DFS replications, and so on.

A more problematic thing with cable though, is it’s a consumer business. From the way it bills to the way it’s supported; its roots and operating procedures are for home users. They sell to business because most of the users are at work during the day and they have reserve capacity. They view business customers as pure gravy; they can use contracts and get additional markup for providing the same service.

They often bill by location, not by account (a home user billing system). Cable companies shut off service if they THINK the bill hasn’t been paid, and then it is the customer's responsibility to figure out what happened (home user mentality). There isn’t a LEC on the face of the earth that will shut off service on a billing error, there isn’t a cable company on the face of the earth that doesn’t. LEC’s have a more experienced workforce, and more available solutions.

If a business calls their support team or the repair center for their LEC operator, a truck is rolling when they hang up the phone - cable is next business day at best. When you call the services center, you are talking to someone in Brazil – or worse – Houston, and their first job is to tell you to fix your stuff because theirs never breaks.

Remember too that cable is usually shared bandwidth. That means if you have a 1 Gbps connection, that is the most you can achieve. Other traffic on the network will cause your effective throughput to be lower. However, fiber is dedicated bandwidth, meaning you have that bandwidth available all of the time. One of the other keys with fiber is scalability. For those who manage a network, in an emergency you may need to quickly scale your bandwidth .... a more difficult feat with cable obviously.

I use cable for home, it has a place because it’s cheap – but I'd never recommend cable to any business as a primary service without backup.

For any business needing bandwidth solutions for their network I always recommend dedicated bandwidth. Your choices usually start with T1 bandwidth but may better fit DS3 bandwidth, business ethernet, or fiber solutions depending on your applications.

For no cost help finding the right dedicated bandwidth solution for your business, including free rate quote comparisons from multiple providers, simply request assistance here:

T1 Lines, DS3 Bandwidth, Business Ethernet, And More

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Len Bosack, CEO of XKL Announces a 100G DWDM Universal Starter Kit

On a quest for Terabit technology since 2001, Len Bosack has taken another stride toward his goal of engineering innovative optical transport solutions.  XKL’s latest engineering feat brings 100G DWDM to clients in a cost-effective and efficient easy to use platform.  This new 100G-transport technology indicates significant advancements in DWDM optical equipment and provides advanced support to power enterprise networks, data centers and regional/long-haul transmission routes.

According to Bosack, this announcement is only one of many that XKL is set to announce this year.  He has implemented 100G DWDM optical networking transport solutions using advanced modulation techniques that provide more spectral efficiency.  What is spectral efficiency you might ask?  It’s the measure of how efficiently a limited frequency spectrum is utilized by the physical layer.  In other words, if you can be efficient in transmitting light across your fiber, you can achieve more speed and bandwidth.  That appears to be exactly what Len Bosack and his engineering team at XKL is set to improve.  

What other features are important to XKL?

• Equipment must be compatible with the existing infrastructure that supports 10G DWDM deployments. This means equipment must be tolerant to PMD, CD, and other fiber nonlinearities as well as interoperate with existing engineering rules established for 10G.
• Systems must be easily deployed and managed. Equipment cannot require tweaking and be difficult when adding lambdas.
• Products must be highly robust, cost effective and enable industry leading low latency for data transmission.

For details on XKL’s latest announcement about it’s Universal Starter kit for 100G per lambda DWDM gear, visit www.xkl.com.  To learn more about XKL’s DarkStar suite of products, email xkl@imillerpr.com.

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Carrier Ethernet Equipment Demand, An Indicator of Global Network Access Trends

Infonetics Research increased its long-term forecast for the Ethernet equipment market from $37.5 billion to $40.2 billion by 2015. Behind these macro-numbers that demonstrate usage and investment in Carrier Ethernet equipment, is the industry's evolving move to next-generation packet-based IP networks, and the related pace of backhaul traffic from consumer, business and mobile.

 
Global Capacity, which provides an automated pricing and ordering platform for carriers, has seen market demand for Ethernet services shift to the positive in a big way over the course of the last year. With this in mind, the integration of Ethernet service into their comprehensive product offer quickly became a necessity.  In fact, corporate leadership advised that entering 2011, Ethernet quotes made up less than 1% of total quote demand as fielded through their proprietary One Marketplace Access Exchange platform.  Over the course of the last year however, quotes specifying Ethernet doubled in volume, while overall requests for quote have risen to a volume of over 200,000/per month. 
 
Global Capacity’s One Marketplace Access Exchange platform is used to generate automatic quotes on a case-by-case basis. The latest iteration of the platform provides customers with automated access to customized Ethernet pricing, in addition to other types of service. Information generated is based on customer-specific requirements, such as location data, supplier rates and design and engineering rules that are unique to that customer, eliminating the manual process of generating quotes. 
 
It seems the real value for operators is derived out of the opportunity to facilitate revenue growth by exposing on-net Ethernet services to automated market demand, while improving EBITDA performance through lower operating expenses. The tool improves efficiency, while effectively streamlining and optimizing the pricing, procurement and provisioning of access network elements – all through a simplified interconnect. 

Visit www.globalcapacity.com for more information, and consult the available case studies for reference to the possible efficiencies in global network access.

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Northern California Data Center Presence Strong...And Getting Stronger

With an estimated three million square feet of data center real estate, the greater San Francisco area is one of the top three data center markets in the nation. And as the northern California region hits a refreshed economic stride, the region that is synonymous with technology will benefit from the recession's pent up demand, as well as ongoing corporate adoption of cloud strategies across all types of industry.

On a big picture level, Campos Research & Analysis just completed a study for Digital Realty Trust, which was released this week. Overall, the North American data center market demonstrates an incredible appetite for expansion, as the survey found that 92% of senior decision makers at large corporations have plans to expand their data center presence in 2012. 54% of these respondents identified expectations of projects to span 15,000 square feet or more in size.

Consider as a supporting barometer, the direction of office real estate in general within the tech sector.  This benchmark accounted for 29% of all growth in the US office market in 2011, adding an estimated 10.2 million square feet of space as identified by real estate services firm Jones Lang LaSalle, Inc.  A positive marker indeed.

Within the northern California region, the City of Santa Clara, with its proximity to Silicon Valley is already considered one of the densest data center hubs in the country.  Developments in the San Francisco Bay area are seeing opportunity, such as a project in the vibrant South of Market ("SOMA") District, which is now coming up to speed. The Fiber Depot is a six story, 105,325 rentable square foot data center, telecommunications and office building,  The former Hawley Terminal Building was previously a storage facility for the Southern Pacific Railroad, and was converted into a telecom switching building, utilizing its ideal location to two primary fiber network loops. Offering a substantial power supply, an upgraded carrier neutral meet-me-room, and large floor plates with load-bearing capacity for heavy equipment, transitioning to data center tenants was a natural evolution.

At present, the site attracts a diverse group of telco and data center tenants, including AT&T, AOL/Time Warner, Global Crossing and Neutral Tandem, with the remaining space leased to office and retail tenants. For details on the Fiber Depot carrier hotel facility, or data center real estate, colocation and design services, visit Wired Real Estate Group, Inc.

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The Impact Of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing has injected new life into the telecommunications industry. It has made it quicker, easier and more cost-effective to develop and produce an application. It is also making a greater number of applications, which were once only available to enterprises, also available to SMBs.

It is certainly a disruptive technology, especially when you also consider the growing popularity of social media communication. There are already a myriad of ways to connect/communicate. Some of them could be considered to be fundamentally different to using ‘POTS’. On-line self-service via the Web, for example, has rendered a lot of tedious contact centre activities (e.g., calling by phone) redundant, which has been a good thing. I’d say that’s a fundamental change? The whole gamut of social media activity, from texting to gaming and from Facebook to Twitter, has altered everyone’s perspective.

But if you’re talking about talking – to someone else – then I think we’ll still be doing that for some time to come (until man evolves to be telepathic). How we do it – physically – is another matter and, already, we’re doing it differently; it’s just that a lot of folks don’t even realise it. Broadband (or more exactly, bandwidth) is the key enabler and signposts the road to disruption (via perdition). Ubiquitous broadband should mean we can communicate any way we can, from anywhere we happen to be, but part of that will still involve talking to another human being. Some of those methods will involve ‘voice’ as an application as we will still wish to talk to customers, colleagues and contacts. Many telecommunications (using the word in its absolute broadest sense) applications will be delivered via cloud-based platforms (such as Aculab Cloud) and broadband access is key to such a paradigm becoming real – and disruptive.

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Has Cloud Computing Changed The Telecommunications Landscape?

"Cloud Computing" hasn't changed the Telecommunications landscape at all in my opinion.

For starters, the Cloud is only as good as the services feeding into it, and in order to benefit greatly from the "Cloud" you need fast internet service that feeds through a lot of data, this covers both wire-line and wireless alike.

When networks start to become faster, more accessible to the average person/business, and reliability can be assured by the services feeding into it, then we will see a major shift in "Cloud" based services.

So in order for the landscape to change the following needs to be addressed:

1. Cost of entry to the "Cloud" itself.

2. Cost of entry to the services to support such demanding setup .... e.g. Fiber, 4G, and larger volumes of accessible data.

3. Perception of service, meaning that not many currently see the value added in it. The Telco's have not promoted it well, again pointing to how it hasn't changed the landscape in anyway. Its still the same old Telco mentality, "throw it out there and lets see who bites."

I personally believe we are still quite a ways yet from the landscape changing. Networks need to support such a move and businesses need confidence in the service. Without that it will be a slow crawl to change.

A lot of adoption has been for specific services that can "go cloud" - but not much of that changed recently.

Note that many companies looking at the cloud already started with some centralized data centres, and moving your IT to someone elses DC or servers somewhere out in the Internet is not a huge change in how you operate the WAN to get to services.

The flip side to putting aspects of services in the cloud is the current heat and light about taking that to its logical conclusion and putting everything in the cloud - that seems much more of a stretch for many companies with complex IT.

What it will do is drive more demand for bandwidth, and more demand for WAN / Internet access reliability - after the cloud becomes the new IT black hole if you lose access.

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Wal-Mart's Data Center Construction Photo Montage

Just South of Colorado Springs, from the Vineyard Data Center Park, there is a vision of splendor.On the Approach, it looks like any other construction complex. It's active, walls are up, the insides are strewn around the property.As you approach, you see the massive undertaking, as construction crews build Wal-Mart's newest data center.The crews are constructing a state of the art data center, expected to be completed by the end of 2012. The company is anticipating a spend of $100 million to just build the data center with an additional spend of $50-$100 million in machinery and equipment over the next 15 years.To find out how you can leverage the power of Colorado Spring's incentive programs to build or lease your own data center, contact the Wired Real Estate Group, representing the Vineyard Data Center Park to learn more: info@wiredre.com

This blog was originally posted at TelecomNewsRoom.

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As the Crow Flies – Network Connectivity Taking the Straight Path

If you could just dig a trench from one location to another and not worry about anything in between – or simply fly direct, over land and sea to get to your destination we can get to where we are going a lot faster. In reality, we have hills to climb, lakes to traverse, turns to maneuver and obstacles to get around. There are buildings, homes, trees, gardens, farms, stores, schools, private property and more to overcome. Getting from point A to point B is not as easy as pulling a string across the room to measure the distance from one wall to another. In the land of communications, building the shortest path is not so easy. There are municipalities to work with, permits to acquire, construction to undertake and many obstacles to overcome – both above and under the ground.

What gets the job done is experience, know-how and contacts. That’s what makes the team at Cross River Fiber so affective. They have built, at the time, best of breed dark fiber networks throughout New Jersey before. Now, the team has amassed even more knowledge, contacts and has identified the routes that need the most attention and have undertaken the construction of building the newest and most direct dark fiber communication routes throughout the State of New Jersey.

I’ll Take You There

That’s the motto at Cross River Fiber. They are in the throws of constructing brand new fiber paths that will reach the towns and villages of Edison, Iselin, Woodbridge, Piscataway and Somerset New Jersey. Not only are they connecting major data centers, enterprise campuses and buildings, but they have the ability to provide custom solutions that deliver dark fiber network directly to hospitals, Government offices, University campuses, major enterprise campuses and more. To find out how Cross River Fiber can ‘Take you There’ contact the team at info@crossriverfiber.com. They will provide you with a network review, project plan and timeline to get you connected – the most direct way.

This blog was originally posted on TelecomNewsRoom.

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Telecom Provider News For March

Here's the news from the Telecommunications industry for March 2012 .....

* Cbeyond - announces it plans to invest more capital into fiber build-outs so it can better serve high-bandwidth customers.

* Earthlink -

- EarthLink announces the launch of its new EarthLink Business IT Services suite of solutions.

- The launch of EarthLink's IT Services enables customers to partner with EarthLink to streamline their internal IT resources and offerings by leveraging a comprehensive mix of IT and security experts in an enterprise class data center.

* MegaPath - is serving up a suite of cloud-based Hosted Microsoft Exchange and Hosted Microsoft SharePoint services. Developed with both the SMB and enterprise customer in mind, the new service suite is part of MegaPath's Complete Office solution.

* Telx - launches Connect Portfolio, a simplified, comprehensive family of scalable interconnection service options for quickly establishing data center, IT, cloud or point of presence colocation infrastructures.

* tw telecom - unlike many of its competitive service provider counterparts isn't anxious to make a big acquisition anytime soon. Instead, the competitive service provider would rather invest its capital in building out its own fiber network to more buildings to deliver Ethernet and related IP services to its growing large business customer base.

To learn more about any of the services cited above AND take advantage of special limited pricing deals, simply request more information here ....

Dedicated Bandwidth And More

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Colorado Springs Lures Major Data Center Projects, Vineyard Data Center Park Makes the Region More Accessible

What has lured Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the world to build its new Data Center in Colorado Springs?  Land is one thing but incentives sealed the deal.  The local government in Colorado Springs offered Wal-Mart $4.5 million in sales and business personal property tax rebates as incentives to close the deal.  And Wal-Mart isn’t the only company to tap into these resources.  Agilent Technologies’ data and technology centers also received over $4 million in incentives that include city personal property tax exemptions and sales and use tax rebates.  Furthermore, Colorado Springs is becoming a hot-bed for data centers serving major corporations including Progressive Insurance, FedEx and Hewlett-Packard.

How can others get into this game and what’s in it for them?

Currently underway is the Vineyard Data Center Park, a 108-acre development just south of downtown Colorado Springs.  It is designed to be the region’s first covenant controlled, sustainable data center campus.  The region is particularly attractive to major data center operations because power rates in the region are 39% below the nations average power rates, this project includes a storm water conservation program, will use recycled building materials, install a permeable pavement, xeriscaping, wetlands preservation, wildlife habitat preservation, tree harvesting and salvaging, composting, and more.  These green initiatives, together with attractive power rates, affordable land and building space are compounded by the incredible incentives offered by the State and Regional government offices for this region.   Oh, and did we mention that the school district is also expected to offer tax exemptions and rebates too?

Why Colorado Springs?

The area is seeking to attract major businesses that can provide employment opportunities to sustain and grow the region’s economy.  The area offers low-cost and reliable electricity, access to an educated workforce and is located in a disaster free zone, for the most part.  All three of these factors make Colorado Springs particularly attractive to companies like Wal-Mart.

The Wal-Mart project is expected to initially employ 30 people with salaries ranging from $30K-$70K.  Over the course of five years it is expected to add additional employees bringing the total to 40 permanent jobs. The data center is expected to be built for $100M with additional equipment investments to reach between $50-$100M over the course of 15 years.  This project alone is expected to add about $488M into the Pike’s Peak region’s economy over its first 15 years.  This is tremendous value to the region and with many other data centers located throughout the area and with additional developments underway, employment opportunities are about to soar – just as the US economy and job rates need them to.

Colorado Springs – the Time is Ripe

It is a great time to consider new data center space and green-field construction opportunities in Colorado Springs.  It’s going to be home to a truly valuable workforce that will bring talent, skills and knowledge into the region.  To find out how you can tap into the incentives and development opportunities available in the region contact WiredRE at www.wiredre.com or email wiredre@imillerpr.com.  The company represents the Vineyard Data Center Park – a property that offers incentives and land development opportunities specifically for data center projects.

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MPLS Networks Are A Good Choice For An International WAN

Choosing MPLS (Multi Protocol Label Switching) may appear to be the hot new technology. The reality is that MPLS networks as a concept really isn't new. For today's international networks it is extremely useful, and it has become very easy to deploy and widely available from a consumer point-of-view. In my opinion, it is the de facto standard for international WANs (wide area networks).

However, more recently VPLS (Virtual Private LAN Service) migration is becoming popular. VPLS offers the ability to run layer 2 (Ethernet VLANs) and layer 3 (MPLS) on the same port. This ability can be very advantageous to separate and push secure connections, raw Internet, general WAN, and other connections out to the branch office as needed.

VPLS is flexible and can run over DSL, T-1, T-3, Metro Ethernet, OC-3, etc. like MPLS, but is not yet as widely available as MPLS. Depending on the provider, you can also mix VPLS with MPLS on the same WAN. All offices would then see each other as being on the same MPLS network, but the VPLS offices would be able to share VLANs. VPLS also has the advantage of always being an Ethernet handoff from the WAN service provider to the consumer, regardless of the technology used to reach your site. With MPLS, you may need DSL, T-1, T-3, Ethernet, OC-3, or some other connection in your router depending on the bandwidth and port provided.

I tend to see MPLS as the current standard and VPLS as the future.

For no cost help designing your international WAN using MPLS networks or VPLS, including free rate quote comparisons from multiple providers, simply request assistance here:

MPLS Networks

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Signs of Southern California Data Center Recovery

As capital becomes more readily available to the colocation market, the need for speed and more capacity will likely play-out with emphasis. In fact, data center advisory firm, Wired Real Estate Group, Inc. completed the placement of another national colocation company in a 43,000 square foot California data center, as they continue to roll after a 2011 that went down with over 100% growth.

The Los Angeles site has 5 MW of existing utility service, with expectations that the site will ultimately garner over $20 million in investment as a Tier III colocation facility over its useful life. California's colocation market is considered one of the largest in the world, and has seen significant data center finance activity over the last several years. Colocation and property firms deploying new capital in the region include Latisys, Alchemy Communications, Digital Realty Trust, Equinix, Vantage Data Centers, DuPont Fabros, Scale Matrix, American Internet Services, Fiber Depot, RedIT and others.

Wired Real Estate CEO, Everett Thompson, anticipates further consolidation and renewed investment in the market , with 2012 producing accelerated growth opportunities for the firm, as well as other public and privately held colocation firms.  The firm has completed over 200 engagements in the last 36 months with leading enterprises, including numerous members of the Fortune 200. Nationally, the firm represents nearly 1 M square feet of colocation and data centers

For more information about WiredRE and its data center research and advisory services on data center design, planning, brokerage and finance visit www.wiredre.com.

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FiberMedia’s Michael Bucheit to Discuss Trends in Data Center Space with Industry Leaders

FiberMedia Group will be one of the companies participationg at today’s DatacenterDynamics Conference, on the CONVERGED Panel, “Is Engineering Flexible Enough to Cope with Future IT Demands?” with fellow industry leaders Stephen Worn, DatacenterDynamics as moderator, Dean Nelson, eBay, Kfir Godrich, HP Technology Services, James Kennedy, RagingWire Enterprise Solutions, Inc. 

Here are some of the questions these industry tastemakers be asking. Have we reached a point in the evolution of the data center industry where facilities cost escalation compared to IT hardware costs is unsustainable? This panel will discuss whether engineering is innovating quickly enough to meet future enterprise IT demands, can modularity [in its many form] deliver this, and what does the future hold for traditional data center builds?

FiberMedia’s Engineering and Executive team, including Michael Bucheit and Chris Baldwin, Sr. VP Engineering and Operations are the ideal candidates to respond, because FiberMedia Group creates customized data center solutions for it’s customers.  With growing space and capabilities, FiberMedia Group offers sustainable solutions, cost-effective pricing and delivers custom builds for its clients.  With a variety of high priority customers in the Financial Services, Healthcare, Information Technolgy, Content and other sectors moving a high level of information across a number of platforms, the FiberMedia team are experts in asking in depth questions about the future of the data center industry.

 Find out more at 4:50pm - 5:30pm today at DatacenterDynamics Converged at the Marriot Marquis in NYC, today, March 13th, 2012.  This industry networking event pulls together the people, processes and technology necessary to execute a world class data center strategy under one roof.

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MPLS Network Design .... What's Important

Before jumping into MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching) for your network design there's important items to consider. Take a step back and first consider what you need your network to do, how, and what must happen if there are issues.

Intent of the network is definitely a critical piece. It is so important to understand what you are putting over the network in order to engineer the optimal network. I've had the same conversations with clients when they realize that they can't have as many call paths as they would like and still be able to surf the net.

Also, business continuity is definitely key. Documenting the plan and understanding how traffic should flow in the event the primary path is unavailable for any reason ensures you have survivability in the instance of an interruption of service or outage of any kind.

If you understand the intent, you can accurately plan for outages or interruptions in your disaster plan. Most times, you don't need to have every type of traffic pass over the MPLS during an outage. You need to understand what is most important to your business, what has the biggest impact on your revenue, and then design a plan that ensures that you don't lose that piece of the puzzle for any length of time.

I think the most important piece is not even the Disaster Recovery plan, but more so the "business continuity" piece. The reality is you want the design to be flawless and address the rare occasion prior to it happening. With having a "business continuity" plan in place this allows for you to continue business seamlessly in the event something does happen. The Disaster Recovery plan will only address how do you recover in the event of an outage, cost, and time associated with the disaster. Business continuity will minimize that impact of these three and ensure you are still operational during this time. The other important pieces of course are the speed and security of the network.

Also key now that I think about it is default route pathing. This ties in to the intent of the network. Even if the original intent of the MPLS network is not to pass internet traffic .... having dynamic routing on the core so that one site can piggy back off of another in the case of an internet connection outage at one of the sites, is often one of the most useful side features that everyone always seems to forget or overlook. Sometimes this can be done with you changing your firewall/router's default gateway to point to the MPLS hop manually or can be done with OSPF/EIGRP.

For no cost help designing your MPLS network .... including free rate quote comparisons from multiple providers ... simply request assistance here:

MPLS Networks

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District of Columbia Data Center Discussion Panel Event

The Data Center Marketplace and ByteGrid Data Centers          Invite You to Attend District of Columbia Data Center Discussion Panel Event & Reception March 22, 2012 at The Concourse Auditorium Continuing a Series of Excellent Discussions for the Data Center Industry  The New York Data Center Discussion Panel Event 09/29/2011, Part 1 of 4 Where: The Concourse Conference Center/Auditorium 1593 Spring Hill Rd Vienna, VA 22182 Driving Directions When: Thursday March 22, 2012 from 12:00 PM to 5:00 PM EDT Add to my calendar Get more information Register Now! ~ Also ~ Please join us for your pre-event Happy Hour* at Wednesday, March 21, 2012  5pm to 7pm 1861 International Drive  Mclean, VA 22102 (703) 448-3900  Network and mingle with sponsors and attendees or Register Here * a "no-host", cash-bar event. Dear Reader, Please accept this invitation to attend our complimentary Data Center Discussion Panel Event Thursday March 22, 2012 from 12:00pm - 5:30pm, at The Concourse Conference Center in Vienna, VA.    A catered reception will follow the main event including wine, beer and hors d'oeuvres. Inviting Economic Development, Scientists, and Technology Professionals for this event, and in preparation for our Data Center Summit - East, September 19th & 20th, at Research Triangle Park Conference Center, in Research Triangle Park, NC. The theme for the Summit is focused on providing a learning experience for providers and consumers of federal, state and/or local data center industry investment incentives, credits to operators of data centers (carbon, etc.), green/eco-friendly technology, laws, accounting and tax treatment, trends and strategies, sustainability, etc..  Find event details below announcement for our pre-event Happy Hour networking mixer at The Capital Grille; located in Mclean, VA.     Click on the link below to register or RSVP. Get more information Register Now! You are cordially invited to attend this free half day of presentations and panel discussion exclusively for IT professionals that are considering colocation, hosting, cloud computing, and network and telecom solutions. This event includes catered food and beverages. Join us bit early to enjoy our caterer's craft for lunch as well as during the mid-event break. At this event, a number of lively and relevant presentations by industry leaders will be presented. Discussions will revolve around trends, issues, alternatives, and challenges Executives are facing today and the solutions that are met through data center, cloud and network options. There will be plenty of networking opportunities with other regional IT leaders seeking to navigate data center and cloud solutions for their business. This dynamic event will showcase technology industry leaders; including: Brady Lambert (CEO, The Data Center Marketplace), Mark Macauley (Co-founder and SVP Sales and Marketing, ByteGrid), Axel Kretschmer (Regional Director, Schneider), Derek Schwartz (Executive Director and Founder, Green Data Center Alliance), Patrick Costello (Renewable Energy Market Expert, ICF International), Jim Kerrigan (EVP and Director, of Grubb and Ellis's Data Center Practice), Ron Vokoun DBIA, LEED AP BD+C (Construction Executive, Mortenson Construction and active in the AFCOM), and more will be speaking about IT issues and state of the art solutions. Don Mitchell, Schneider, responding to question from attendee. Who will be attending, and who will you expect to meet at this event? Data Center Marketplace event attendees are decision makers from Enterprise, Non-profit and Government; including: Chief Information & Technology Office Chief Executive & Financial Officers Datacenter Facilities Managers & Engineers Information Technology & Infrastructure Managers Network, Cabling & Communication Engineers & Integrators Architects, Design Build Consultants, and MEP Professionals Datacenter, Commercial Office Space & Operations Staff NOC, SOC and DOC Staff & Managers Server, Storage & Application Administrators Information Security & Risk Management Executives As an attendee, you'll get real-life answers from industry knowledge leaders about how to make the cloud and data center solutions work for you and your organization. Don't miss this opportunity to learn, query, network and mingle with industry professionals! Get more information Register Now! Please feel free to reply above or contact Brady Lambert with any questions about the event or how to become a show sponsor. We look forward to seeing you at the event! RSVP requested. Sincerely, Brady Lambert, CEO The Data Center Marketplace brady.lambert@datacentermarketplace.com (713) 494-2574 Skype: brady..lambert Voxer PTT (Android and iPhone): 7134942574 Cloud Marketplace: cloud.datacentermarketplace.com Twitter: @datacentermktpl, @cloudmarketplac, @datacentersumit, @datacenterevent, @techvangelistas Sponsors

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MPLS Networks vs Frame Relay .... Is MPLS Here To Stay?

When considering MPLS Networks vs Frame relay for your network design it's not really a fair comparison.

First, MPLS will not replace Frame Relay. They are not in the same Layer. So let's put that one to rest.

Another way to ask is... what is the future of Frame? It's all but done - there are too many other cost effective ways to transport bits that can maintain an application's throughput requirements.

HOWEVER, there are still active Frame ports out there, and will be for a long time. Just look at how long it took X.25 to fade away.

The FUNNY part is, that the Frame Relay concept is on it's way back; just carried on a lower cost and more accessible transport method.

Of course not all Frame will disappear. Just like some people still have cell phones that have the same basic functionality as they did 15 years ago .... but the rest of us at least have phones with advanced functionality if not smartphones. They may have a very specific reason, or be complacent in upgrading their technology, but that doesn't mean it's a viable product. The carriers want to eliminate those networks because the market has moved to IP and MPLS, for very good reason, and maintaining those old ATM networks are costly.

Another parallel to phones is that the market has moved significantly toward applications (like communication as a service, infrastructure as a service, cloud computing, etc) since MPLS was productized. These applications are the drivers of MPLS networks ... and now VPLS ... and cannot be supported in nearly as efficient, secure or redundant manner with Frame/ATM because of MPLS' QoS, any-to-any connectivity, private network topology, etc.

Frame may not be dead, but it's a dead man walking. Businesses that have it, and agents trying to sell it, need to shift their paradigm. MPLS is here to stay, it's a commodity now for the most part, and the differentiators are what applications and managed services the carriers are running on the network.

For no cost help designing a MPLS network for your business .... including free rate quote comparisons ... simply request assistance here:

MPLS Networks

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