The Kansas City area is an exciting place to be right now. The region is buzzing about innovation, household gigabit fiber and entrepreneurship.

As I’m attending numerous events surrounding these topics, I have noticed a trend in the types of questions and increased interest in data centers, colocation, networks, private cloud, public cloud, hybrid cloud, carrier hotels, disaster recovery and the list goes on. So, in the coming months I will work to share with you what I see, hear and learn. If you would like to see a particular topic covered, send me an email at greg@1102grand.com or give me a call at 816-213-7731.

The most common question I have received lately is what is a carrier hotel? (Disclaimer: 1102 GRAND is Kansas City’s carrier hotel and colocation facility.) The simple explanation is that they are facilities almost always found in a downtown area where the fiber is the most dense, close to the ILEC (incumbent local exchange carrier) and have an abundance of carriers/providers with fiber built into the facility. Typically, carrier hotels are identified by their address and they are found in Tier 1 (sometimes multiple) and Tier 2 cities.

Carrier hotels provide a neutral place for carriers and providers to connect their networks. For example, 1102 GRAND has over 30 ISPs (internet service providers) in our Meet Me Room where all the passive connections occur. With so many possibilities for direct connections to multiple networks, carrier hotels make ideal colocation facilities, or offsite data centers, for businesses of all sizes and government agencies that need access to multiple providers, or have large bandwith appetites. The Meet Me Room’s location within the facility where clients already collocate allows clients to easily change or add network services as their model scales or evolves. Additionally, in most cases, access to a network becomes less expensive at a carrier hotel because the end client has a direct gateway to the ISP’s network. The local loop or access charge goes away or is minimal. Sites such as 1102 GRAND are used as primary/production data centers, backup sites or PoPs (point of presence) on the client’s nationwide or global network.

That is a high level overview of the carrier hotel, but if you want to come check out our facility, give me a call and we will make arrangements.

KANSAS CITY, MO–(Marketwire – Jan 10, 2012) - 1102 GRAND announced today that it has successfully completed the Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements No. 16 (SSAE 16) Type 2 audit. SSAE 16 is a standard developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) for service organizations and replaces the previous SAS 70 standard incorporating international controls based on the ISAE 3402 standard. Completion of the SSAE 16 Type 2 required an independent and rigorous examination by an independent Certified Public Accounting firm, Mayer Hoffman McCann P.C., validating that 1102 GRAND has the proper controls in place for the delivery of secure and high availability colocation and interconnection operations.

Greg Elliott, director of business development for 1102 GRAND, said, “The completion of an SSAE 16 Type 2 audit is yet another example of how 1102 GRAND continues to invest in our carrier hotel facility and signifies our ongoing commitment to delivering a high level of quality. For our colocation and interconnection customers, SSAE 16 compliance provides confidence our service organization adheres to the critical processes and operational controls necessary to support their business environments,” said Elliott.

1102 GRAND is a Midwestern carrier hotel and network neutral colocation facility specifically enhanced with the infrastructure to host and provide services to an array of global network operators including carriers, service providers and enterprise customers who demand highly secure and connected, customized solutions for their core networking equipment. 1102 GRAND offers a wide array of colocation options including cabinets and private cage space which are connected to a carrier neutral Meet Me Room, housing over 30 carriers and service providers (http://1102grand.com/) Twitter @1102grand and Facebook:http://www.facebook.com/pages/1102-GRAND/106559716056523

Thank you to all the golfers, sponsors and Deer Creek Golf Club for another successful golf tournament and IT networking event. The competition was fierce yet friendly and great connections were made.

Congratulations to the winners:
1st Place- Bluebird Network: Mike Brigman, Steve Crane, Don Gehringer and Scott Brown
2nd Place- K&W Underground: Rex Schick, Bill Reidy, Scott Plumb and Dwight Davis
3rd Place- Gary Kapperman, George Porta, Wayne Walker and Connie Walker

Longest Drive- Wayne Walker
Longest Putt- Bill Reidy
Closest to the Pin- DJ Good

Thank you again to our tournament sponsors: Rockefeller Group Technology Solutions (RGTS), K&W Underground, Stanger Industries, Lantel, Time Warner Business Class, KNK Telecom, Westhues Electric, Boulevard Brewery, Clayman Promotions, and Centriq IT Training. We couldn’t have done it without your generosity!

EVENT DATE & LOCATION

Summer IT Networking Happy Hour
Thursday, July 28, 2011
5:00 – 8:00 p.m.
(Raffles occur at 6 p.m. and 7 p.m.)

Boulevard Brewery, Muehlebach Suite
2501 Southwest Boulevard
Kansas City, MO 64108

The IT Networking Happy Hours provide the unique opportunity to connect with technology industry professionals, exchange innovative ideas and establish beneficial relationships and strategic partnerships to grow your business. The events also promote KC’s assets for the technology sectors and innovators within the industry.

Join us and 300 professionals from the KC region’s technology community at some of the greatest venues Kansas City has to offer for networking. Enjoy Boulevard beer and raffles for some of the hottest tech gadgets available. More Events

We get this question a lot from prospective customers so I thought I would post this datacenterjournal.com. article, “What Do All Those Nines Mean? In short, don’t base your collocation decision purely on one criteria. The decision on where to collocate or how to design your data center is so much more complicated than that.  The same thing goes with the Tier I – IV structure as these inflexible terms are just good for broad comparisons and don’t ever tell the whole story.  One facility that can claim 99.99% uptime is not the same as another although many people think that is what it means.  Likewise, there are Tier II data centers that are a better fit than some Tier IIIs for some companies.  At the end of the day, your business should opt for a collocation environment that is right-sized for not only your uptime and reliability (not all businesses are the same) and your budget.

According to the article, “High availability is critical to many modern IT infrastructures, but the most common means of measuring it—percent availability, or by the “nines”—can be misleading. Availability is often listed as some collection of nines: 99.9% (three nines), 99.9% (four nines) and 99.999% (five nines). Each corresponds to the percentage of time that an IT infrastructure is available: three nines corresponds to about 8.76 hours of downtime a year, four nines corresponds to only about 53 minutes of downtime a year and five nines corresponds to about 5 minutes of downtime a year.”

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As I have mentioned in previous posts, I believe cloud computing has a place in today’s market, but I still firmly believe it is more buzz than reality.  I’m not saying that it does not exist because of course it does and some are doing it very well.  Instead, I am merely saying that it still represents a very small portion of the market although I expect cloud computing to grow once it evolves.  Until then, I still stand by the fact that most companies are best suited for a hybrid collocation model (primarily collocation with certain elements in a hosted or cloud environment).

According to a Data Center Knowledge Article, “Go Daddy & The Power of Uncloudy Infrastructure,” “Cloud computing has provided exciting new opportunities for developers and start-ups, and is gaining meaningful traction with enterprise customers. But for the moment, cloud computing’s mindshare is bigger than its market share. As of June of 2010, Tier 1 Research estimated that cloud computing represented 2 percent of the IT infrastructure market. Even if it has doubled in size over the past year – as suggested bydata shared by Amazon- that still suggests market share of about 5 percent.”

“IDC has somewhat higher estimates, saying cloud represented 5 percent of IT spending in 2009 and will increase its share to 10 percent by 2o13. That would still leave 90 percent of IT spending focused on other delivery methods.”

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