
Posted By: Darren Bonawitz, principal of 1102 GRAND
1102 GRAND would like to congratulate Kansas City, Mo. for being selected “to collaborate with Google on the deployment of Google’s one-gigabit-per-second, ultra-high speed, fiber-to-the-home broadband network.” 1102 GRAND is extremely excited about Google’s extended investment in the Kansas City area.
According to an article from kcmonitor.com, “As the second city to be selected for this initiative, Kansas City, Mo., joins its sister city, Kansas City, Kan., in a regional partnership that will help to ensure our communities’ shared success.
By: Darren Bonawitz, principal of 1102 GRAND
It has been a couple of weeks since Google’s announcement to build an ultra high speed fiber optic network with speeds of 1 Gigabit/second in Kansas City, Kan. Since then, I have had a few conversations with people who are directly involved with the project and have also fielded dozens of questions from others asking for my take on the announcement.
Overall, there is still a lot of excitement and optimism about the announcement as one would naturally expect, but with an announcement such as this, there are going to be a significant number of questions too. A lot of the questions pertaining to the project itself have already been addressed by representatives from Google and the city, and are easily found with a quick search online (might I suggest Google?). Those questions aren’t what interest me most though.
In my opinion, the best and most exciting question is a simple one – “Now what?” These two simple words offer nearly limitless possibilities. No one has the full answer to the question since it is still up to people such as you and me to determine. Make no mistake, as this project unfolds, people from around the nation and the world are going to be watching Kansas City, and it is up to us to capitalize on a project so monumental. Opportunities like this do not come around often, and we are fortunate enough to have it land in our fine city.
So whether you’re a serial entrepreneur or not, if there was ever a time to innovate and create, it is now. If you have a fully developed business plan or merely an idea on a napkin today, there are an amazing amount of resources available to help you through the lifecycle of concept to company. Just remember that all great companies started with an idea backed by determination and courage. So if you have wanted more or dreamt of launching a technology business, don’t hold back and don’t let anyone stop you including yourself. I sincerely hope you come up with the next Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube, and I hope you dream … and dream big.
Posted By: Darren Bonawitz, principal of 1102 GRAND
1102 GRAND would like to congratulate Kansas City, Kan. on the announcement by Google to develop an ultra high speed fiber networking within the community. There were obviously a lot of cities vying for this opportunity even within our own metropolitan area and everyone should be commended for all of their hard work and dedication to bring this project to the Kansas City area. It will certainly be exciting to watch the project unfold.
Posted By: Darren Bonawitz, principal of 1102 GRAND
In the telecom sector, specifically the wireless industry, AT&T’s plan to buy wireless provider T-Mobile for a reported $39 billion is the biggest piece of news in awhile. While I do not normally comment on deals and transactions, this one has particular interest to me with Sprint being headquartered in Overland Park. For several years, I along with many others, were waiting on an announcement from Sprint and T-Mobile regarding a merger.

The industry has been full of rumors regarding the joining of the third and fourth largest wireless providers to form a unified wireless company that could potentially compete more effectively with the first and second largest wireless providers, Verizon Wireless and AT&T. So the AT&T / T-Mobile announcement came as a surprise to me. Before I go any further, it is important to note that this is just an announcement about a potential transaction, and there are still considerable regulatory hurdles to cross. That process is not quick or guaranteed and could take a year or more to run its course.
As one of the major employers in the Kansas City metropolitan area, news regarding Sprint is of particular interest even when they are not directly involved. It is no secret that Sprint has really struggled over the past several years with customer churn, financial losses, and poor marks for customer service based on third party surveys. With that said, over the past twelve months or so, it appears Sprint has made major strides to improve across various areas to curb the customer churn and improve customer service ratings. This surprise announcement could not have resonated well within the Sprint campus leaving people scratching their heads and wondering what this means for consumers, the industry as a whole, their employer and employees.
They are not alone as people close to the industry are wondering and speculating as well. While Sprint, in my opinion, is certainly not in any eminent danger, they are definitely not in an enviable position either. I will be very curious to see if customer churn starts to increase again. That would definitely not be a good sign and could escalate a potential next move for them before market cap erodes.
First, I expect a revamped marketing campaign and focus on continued improvement with regard to existing customer relations. Once existing customers are addressed, then they can dig in for the fight to attract new customers. I have witnessed multiple large scale fiber network integrations and they are always a tedious process with potential pitfalls. Who knows? Maybe Sprint can successfully position themselves as the friendly “little guy” alternative to the “big boys.” People like choices and America likes the underdog and come back stories. I’ll also be curious to see if they start going after small acquisitions of their own targeting someone like U.S. Cellular or pre-paid providers as some speculate.
While a lot of peoples’ immediate response was that the AT&T/T-Mobile announcement set up a potential Verizon Wireless / Sprint deal, I’m not so sure. Keep in mind that it is more than just dollars and customers that makes a deal a good fit. These are businesses built on extremely expensive network platforms that have to interconnect and interoperate. In fact, that is likely a potential reason the Sprint / T-Mobile deal did not get done. With that in mind, I could just as easily see, what I would call a non-traditional buyer without a legacy wireless network, enter the picture. This will be an interesting story for people in the industry as well as the Kansas City area to watch as it unfolds.
Like many people, I have been following the aftermath of the massive earthquake to hit Japan. Specifically, I have been reading articles from various sources regarding data centers and telecommunications. This article, from Data Center Knowledge, is one that raised an interesting point that I thought I would share.
Major Tokyo Data Centers Fuel Up for Blackouts
Many enterprise data centers still do not have generators and many that do unfortunately do not service them properly including keeping fuel topped off. Others do a good job in these areas, but are still at risk unknowingly because of the potential refueling issues due to significant demand following major catastrophes or lack of an existing fuel contract altogether.
It does not take a 9.0 earthquake to cause issues such as this either. A few years ago, there was a significant thunderstorm that went through the Kansas City area, and one of the diesel fuel suppliers took a hit from lightning and had a large tank catch on fire. This single lightning bolt caused major issues for all customers relying on that wholesaler across the metro since they could not supply any additional fuel. So gas stations around the metro were out of diesel fuel for multiple days, and that would have been a very bad time for needing fuel if companies or data centers were only serviced by that wholesaler.
Fortunately, 1102 GRAND has fuel contracts in place with multiple providers who are serviced by multiple diesel wholesalers from diverse areas.
Here is an article that I think our customers will find interesting. For those who haven’t followed the topic, this is a trend that has been consistent over the past few years. Three years ago, we raised our temperature threshold from 68 to the 72 – 74 degrees Fahrenheit range.
There are challenges to taking the temperature up higher in a public data center. For example, as the temperature goes up in the data center so does the ambient noise level as equipment fans operate at a higher RPM. A second example is customer perception. Many customers still have an expectation of very cool temperatures experienced in the past. If it is not noticeably cool in a colocation room, often times customers assume there is an issue. Finally, equipment also needs to be in sync with the data center temperature changes.
Therefore, public data centers have to walk a fine line. We want to save energy by increasing temperatures in the data center, but we do so at the risk of losing business if customers falsely believe their equipment is at risk. We have to strike a balance and do what we can to educate customers about current data center trends to ensure that we are all on the same page.
Read the article here
Posted By: Darren Bonawitz, principal of 1102 GRAND
Virtualization is very common in today’s data center environment and in companies of all sizes and vertical markets. While this can potentially be a great cost-savings strategy due to the inherent benefits, there are some “gotchas” to watch out for including security. If you are thinking about virtualization or are already actively utilizing it, I encourage you to check out the following article, written by Jon Brodkin of Network World, which discusses how security risks can be mitigated in virtualized systems.

By: Darren Bonawitz, principal of 1102 GRAND
In the past five to 10 years, for a lot of organizations, there were always two different camps. There was the telecom person and the IT person. In a lot of cases, unfortunately, these two people did not always see eye to eye on things.
In the economic down turn about 10 years ago, there was a lot of technical personnel restructuring as businesses decided how to do more with less. In a lot of cases, it was the telecom guy who was let go. The front side of it seemed like the IT guy won because they got to retain their job. Unfortunately, that was pretty short lived. They realized that they were now responsible for voice. Suddenly they were expected to be the resident guru in their organization on a platform they really didn’t know a lot about. That is because for a long time the communication infrastructure had been kept separate from IT. Now as time has gone by, these technologies have converged to a large extent.
During this transition, IT leaders had to learn the nuances of voice and the associated impact on their environment especially in voice over IP or VOIP deployments. So after technology improved and issues around reliability and performance were resolved, voice became data. The IT teams became more comfortable in meeting the needs of their respective enterprise organization. They gave communication as a service which seems to have had a really strong momentum but weaned a little bit. Now seems like a prime time for it to resurge with latency and jitter issues being addressed by vendors. Over the last few years, virtualized voice has really improved greatly and now seems that most vendors do have some flavor of a virtualized, unified communications platform.
In addition to virtualization, the cloud is also playing a role too. There is no doubt that the cloud is a major topic in enterprises around the globe and datacenter industry itself. As I have mentioned in previous blog posts, the cloud is not a silver bullet for technology. You cannot move a whole datacenter into the cloud and call it good. There are a lot of things that have to be considered from application performance to security. Ultimately, cloud does have its place but it has limitations as well. With that said, I still firmly believe that the right solution for most enterprises is some form of a hybrid datacenter or colocation provider with a cloud component.
One of the top applications that makes since moving into the cloud is voice. The cost of on-premise communication equipment is simply not worth the maintenance or management. If you start to look at this and want to determine if it is the right move for your organization, you have to remember if your organization moves to the cloud or a hosted communication provider, it is still critical to fully understand how that place is going to fit in your organization’s overall IT strategy.
This combination of moving voice into a cloud environment is a perfect example of why so many people will turn to 1102 GRAND. As a carrier hotel, we bring together the carriers service providers and the enterprise customer into one place so that they can interconnect in an efficient manner. Enterprise customers can utilize our datacenter infrastructure for the applications not well-suited for the cloud. However, they can still have the ability to connect with tenants of ours who offer cloud services. It is the most bang for the buck and the most customization and control over what they want to do in their organization. Essentially, they get to tailor a solution while reducing capital and operating expenses and simultaneously improve performance and reliability of their overall platform.
For more information visit www.1102grand.com or email questions to info@1102grand.com.
Posted by: Darren Bonawitz
1102 GRAND, Kansas City’s Data Center and Internet Hub, announced today that Hurricane Electric, the world’s largest IPv6-native Internet backbone and leading colocation provider, recently established a PoP at 1102 GRAND’s Meet Me Room.
The new PoP allows Hurricane Electric to offer 1102 GRAND’s customers greater bandwidth, reduced latency and improved quality of service.
Darren Bonawitz, principal of 1102 GRAND said, “Hurricane Electric is a terrific addition to our Meet Me Room, and we enthusiastically welcome them to our facility. Hurricane Electric’s pricing model and robust IPv6 enabled global IP network will help to cost-effectively solve the network challenges facing our service provider and enterprise colocation customers alike,” said Bonawitz.
“We are pleased to have established a presence at 1102 GRAND’s Meet Me Room,” said Mike Leber, president of Hurricane Electric. “1102 GRAND’s enterprise customers and telecom providers will be well serviced as they begin implementing IPv6 services and utilize our global Internet backbone.”
Hurricane Electric is a leading Internet Backbone and Colocation Provider. Hurricane Electric operates its own global IPv4 and IPv6 network and owns several data centers in Fremont, California, running multiple N-by-10 Gbps links throughout North America, Europe and Asia. Founded by Mike Leber in his garage in 1994, Hurricane Electric now operates the largest IPv6 Internet Backbone in the world as measured by the number of networks connected. Additional information can be found at http://www.he.net.
1102 GRAND is a Midwestern carrier hotel and network neutral collocation 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 collocation options including cabinets, cage space, suites and space for private data centers, all of which are connected to a carrier neutral Meet Me Room, housing nearly 30 carriers and service providers (http://1102grand.com/) Twitter @1102grand.