This means paying two monthly bills, for two Internet connections. Strong selling point? Probably not for most people. So what is the appeal? Is it something that will be that useful? First, we would need to know a few things.
How much of your business relies on the Internet? Sure, a quick 10 minute outage is an inconvenience, but most businesses will survive, albeit with different levels of comfort and success.
What happens if there is an extended outage? Can you operate an entire day without an Internet connection? How much money would you lose from being offline for an entire business day?
While the answers to these questions will vary, the fact is there are a growing number of daily business operations that utilize an Internet connection.
VoIP phones? No Internet, no phones. Credit card processing? Unless you use an analog telephone line, that’s out too. Rely on email?
Your phone may be capable, but is that something you want to be stuck doing for an extended period? The fact is, more and more, we really on a stable Internet connection.
What impact does lost time have on your daily operation? While I touched on some of the basics here, think about how you could function without a connection. For some people, it just isn’t possible.
If you are a financial institution that utilizes an offsite financial database, you rely on a connection to service your customers. If you are an insurance company that sends and receives quote information over the Internet and take payments through online processing, you can’t operate.
If you have an office with all VoIP phones and every employee utilizes online tools and services, you can’t operate. Or maybe you are a healthcare provider that needs a connection for patient insurance?
You will have to make some choices about losing a day if any of these apply to you. This is a reality and, in some cases, a gamble.
This just isn’t something we need right now.
Understandable for a lot of businesses out there. There are different needs for different business types.
Restaurants, for instance, probably couldn’t accept credit or debit cards if they lost connection. During a temporary outage, you can relay to your customers that you can only accept cash.
If you have a few users and work from a laptop, you can tether your mobile connection. Whatever the case, it isn’t something everyone needs.
Isn’t it just wasted money if my connection never drops out? Not necessarily. With some good IT work, you can route different Internet traffic through your two ISPs.
Consider it like load-balancing. You can also have it set up that if one of your two networks drop, the other one connects automatically. Again, lots of options are available to you.
Think you need a failover ISP?
There are places where you may not have the option of multiple providers, but in most business areas, there are different options available.
So what happens if you do have a second connection? How do you connect to your backup? Is it automatic?
Your IT department or managed service provider, like Tech Experts, can set that up for you. There are many options depending on your specific setup, but being covered against Internet service outages is universal.