5 tips for preparing it for the unexpected
Dallas has a brand new look
By Zayo
At home in Colorado with the zColo team
2017/ Volume 1 / Issue 2
New facilities in California
Spring 2017 ________________________________ PUBLISHER & MANAGING DIRECTOR Hannah Howard Bink @binkmarketeer COPY EDITOR Pat Nichols CONTRIBUTORS Louise Atkinson Anthony Estes Dan Gannon Jenny Gerson Travis Howick TJ Karklins Vito Mangialardi Aaron Shelley ________________________________ Send comments and inquiries to: zcolomarketing@zayo.com zColo: The Magazine is published twice a year by the zColo Product Management & Marketing teams. Copyright 2017 by Zayo Group. All rights reserved. ________________________________ zayo.com/services/ data-center-colocation Consequently, rather than build their own data centers in these smaller markets, many content providers want to partner with colocation providers, like zColo that are in the right geographic locations, with the necessary density and can offer connectivity, scalability and reliability, as well as square footage and power. To learn about Zayo’s colocation options in Tier-1 and Tier-2 markets, check out our zColo facilities list.
Entrance to 393 Inverness Parkway, Englewood, CO
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INSIDE
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5 Tips for Preparing IT for the Unexpected Certified Senior Business Continuity Management (BCM) professional , Vito Mangialardi, outlines how every organization can stay prepared.
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Going Green with zColo Learn how zColo, and our customers, are saving energy and money through energy efficency initiatives
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Security & Style A peek at zColo's new look in Dallas
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California Bound zColo continues to invest in expansion throughout the Golden State
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COVER: zColorado At home, in Colorado, with the zColo team
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Why IaaS for healthcare and why now? The rise of information-centric care and its impact on IT
Talk of the Town MacStadium CEO, Greg McGraw, discusses why they chose zColo for their Las Vegas expansion
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Owning Your Own Infrastructure vs Utilizing Public Cloud Guest contributor, DataSales, discusses how each option can affect your bottom line
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Ask A Data Center Manager Meet Tony Estes in Northern Virginia
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Ask A Data Center Manager
It’s been a busy few months for the zColo team. We’ve expanded in both the U.S. and in Europe. We’re upgrading our data centers to focus on a better customer experience and we are more focused than ever on energy efficiency. This second issue of the zColo Magazine focuses on these exciting initiatives. Our California expansion includes a new data center in Santa Clara, a new build at the One Wilshire facility in Los Angeles, and the recently announced acquisition of KIO Network’s San Diego data centers. In combination with Zayo’s acquisition of Electric Lightwave, our customers now benefit from diverse long haul & metro fiber routes and nine data centers up and down the West Coast. In March, we also announced the opening of our third Paris data center in Vélizy, located in the heart of a growing tech and retail corridor. With no alternative data centers with comparable scale in the area, this facility meets the growing need for colocation and access to our extensive fiber network throughout Europe. At zColo, we’re more than just space and power. We pride ourselves on the best team in the business, with data center managers who have both expertise and a relentless focus on the customer experience. We are continuously upgrading our facilities to make them more secure, comfortable and enjoyable. Additional initiatives include investing in efficiency to save our customers money and upgrading our national technical support desk. Thanks to our contributors, who took the time to write compelling articles on these and other relevant topics. We hope that you enjoy our Spring 2017 issue. TJ Karklins Senior Vice President, zColo by Zayo
fROM MY dESK
Preparing for the Unexpected: 5 Steps for IT Business Continuity Planning by Vito Mangialardi
It’s a question you need to answer before disaster strikes: how well can your organization deal with disruption to your business? System or power outages, natural disasters and other unforeseen events can overwhelm your ability to provide the technology and critical functions your business and customers depend upon. Business is increasingly a 24/7 activity that relies heavily on the capabilities of complex, interconnected business systems and networks. IT professionals’ ability to keep everything running is more important than ever. One of the most valuable things I’ve learned about emergencies is that business continuity plans are only as good as the IT strategies that enable them. IT departments must play a pivotal role in every aspect of business continuity, from strategy and planning to resource allocation to implementation and monitoring. Here are five important IT considerations to help your organization implement a business continuity plan. 1. Be Proactive Business continuity is not something you implement at the time of a disaster. It’s all about proactive planning and assessing your risks before a problem occurs. Learn how IT fits into every aspect of your organization’s operations, from deliveries to ordering, from voice capabilities to data storage and retrieval. By knowing how your IT operations are connected to these functions, you’ll be able to work with colleagues in other departments to develop an effective, cross-functional business continuity plan. Remember: failure to develop an effective plan can prevent you from delivering your products and services on time, resulting in lost customer confidence, decreased sales and revenue, and possibly even a big hit to your brand reputation and future profits. 2. Evaluate Your Communication Dependencies To be an effective partner in the business continuity process, identify your organization’s most valuable assets and critical business functions – i.e. those that must be preserved in an emergency – and then determine how dependent those assets and business functions are on the company’s business systems and networks. Think about it this way: organizations are connected across offices, cities and continents; workers collaborate using mobile devices, laptops and tablets, from remote sites and from home; meanwhile, your customers and partners expect instantaneous access and response times. Now ask yourself: in the event of disaster, outage or shutdown, which of these technology channels would be absolutely essential to keeping your most important business assets functioning? Which functions could your business do without, and for how long? Knowing the answers to these IT questions will go a long way toward building an effective business continuity plan. If you are concerned about the dependability of the telco or service provider’s redundancy to your business, take the time to explore the following five items with your telecom provider: Understand your business communications system requirements Talk to your telecom provider about their network resiliency status Focus on the services required, not the technology Define and have your telco/service provider build the required level of resilience Ask your telco/service provider for network audits of routing details (pathing) The key goal of telecom network disaster recovery is restoration of communications systems to the same level of service provided before an outage or catastrophe. But it is also critical to maintain connections while things are still being disrupted in order to keep important information flowing. If telecom is vital to business survival, you should consider redundant, diverse, private, or higher availability networks to meet your continuity needs. 3. Understand Your Vulnerabilities You also need to help identify your company’s critical components, such as facilities, employees, business processes, IT systems, applications, data, platforms, and networks. Understanding which components are most important to your daily operations will help you identify the vulnerabilities in your business processes and network infrastructure. It will also help you assess the impact a disaster, outage or shutdown would have on employees, customers partners, and other stakeholders. 4. Set Priorities for Risk Mitigation It is essential to determine how long you can afford to be inoperable and to define the impacts of a disruption to every level of your organization’s operations – business, financial and communications platforms. From there, you can begin to develop a risk mitigation strategy that takes into account each of those impacts, and to identify objectives, requirements and priorities for the recovery of critical business components. 5. Develop Your Recovery Plan This is an essential point, because no matter how many preventive measures you have in place, disruptions still happen. You can greatly reduce the negative impact on your business and speed up recovery times by preparing your network and IT procedures in advance: Implement system and data backup arrangements and the key procedures to support your recovery strategy. Leverage third party colocation data centers, including those that offer cloud computing, to minimize IT risk issues. Negotiate vendor contracts and/or lease agreements to acquire equipment and services that will help you in the event of a disaster. Upgrade network and business data security such as firewalls, intrusion detection, hacker protection, password authentication, and data encryption. Assess and strengthen your network redundancy and re–routing capabilities, as well as your work–around procedures and/or contingency plans. You should also determine critical vendor and business partner disaster recovery capabilities in the event that they’re impacted by the same disaster. The role of IT managers and planners will only increase as more business processes move onto company networks and into the cloud. These are just a few very high-level considerations to think about from an IT business continuity perspective. If you have not fully addressed your communication dependencies and need a trusted adviser, consider Zayo’s team of professionals. Our experience and insight means we can help you quickly pinpoint vulnerabilities, address potentially dangerous situations and document a plan to mitigate the risk should an event ever occur. Zayo can advise, build and manage the right solution for you that is on strategy and on budget. We can help you protect your access to your information and your IT services no matter what the environment.
Vito Mangialardi is a certified Senior Business Continuity Management (BCM) professional with 20 years’ experience in the telecommunications sector. A hands-on senior manager in Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery Planning, Emergency, Risk and Incident Management, Vito has experience with many events threatening or impacting business operations (people, process, information, technology and facilities). As a leader he has functions in multiple roles, including facilitator, instructor, and consultant.
Going Green with zColo Jenny Gerson
At zColo, we strive to reduce overall energy consumption and minimize reliance on fossil fuels in our data centers. We have just finalized a purchase of 87 million kilowatt hours of green power in our Illinois, Texas, and New Jersey markets and are now a certified EPA Green Power Partner. Efficiency projects in our U.S. facilities include upgraded power and HVAC system components, enhanced airflow management, lighting retrofits and other improvements.. In several facilities in Europe, we’re going even further with state-of-the-art cooling and other strategies to reduce overall power loads. Aligning with our focus on energy efficiency initiatives, our metered power offering can reduce energy consumption by engaging customers in energy usage management. At Zayo, we’ve aligned some solutions to ensure our customers get what they want when they need it -- and pay only for the service they use. Zayo’s CloudLink and FlexConnect services are based on this on-demand model so businesses can scale bandwidth up or down to handle fluctuating demands. We have also introduced a similar approach in zColo called metered power, available to our larger zColo customers. Just like it sounds, metered power is a usage-based power pricing solution. Rather than paying for block power whether you use it or not, you only pay for the power you use. Similar to residential energy programs that show usage patterns with smart meters, industrial metered power solutions provide transparency around your usage so you can consume power more efficiently. Metered power saves money and reduces energy usage. We applaud our customers for also adopting more energy efficient approaches. Some are transitioning to new, energy-efficient equipment. According to a recent Energy Star survey, upgrading to new servers can save as more than 50 percent on energy consumption. Based on the U.S. average cost of energy and the average utilization of a server, this results in $60 to $120 of savings annually. For a full cabinet of servers, the energy savings on an annual basis can approach $5,000. The savings for businesses can add up to significant sustainability impacts on a national and global basis. According to a recent U.S. Department of Energy study on data center energy use, energy use has grown only slightly while demand has increased significantly. In 2014, data centers consumed approximately 70 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity representing a 4 percent increase over five years. That compares to a 24 percent increase in the preceding five years. To learn more about our efficiency programs or request a tour of one of our data centers, go to zayo.com/services/data-center-colocation.
Hannah Howard Bink
Security & Style
A peek at zColo's new look
Conference room at 1100 Empire Central Place, Dallas, TX
DC01 has plenty of space and power available to accommodate your Dallas deployment.
zColo welcomed 1100 Empire Central Place to our Dallas portfolio in 2016. Since then it has been undergoing a transformation to make the facility more secure and the environment more welcoming and comfortable for our customers. Largely a blank slate, we decided to take this opportunity to introduce new function, form, and updated feel for the data center. The facility itself is one of our crowning jewels. Boasting four generators with 2N configuration and 2 MW total UPC, 1100 Empire Central Place is designed to meet your growing colocation needs in the Dallas-area. With 24/7 manned security, available remote hands services and 36,000 square feet of raised floor, this facility checks all the boxes. Combined with Zayo’s 4,000 fiber route miles in Texas, we can help create a virtual presence in InfoMart’s 1950 N. Stemmons carrier hotel for a fraction of the cost. Connecting to 1950 N Stemmons also allows access to DE-CIX, which operates several carrier and data center-neutral internet exchanges internationally. As you arrive at the facility, you’ll notice a few special features designed with security in mind. All visitors must announce themselves at the gate to gain entry to this facility’s parking lot. Then, upon entering the lobby, you’ll notice two mantraps that immediately greet you. These two uni-directional mantraps are enclosed in bullet-proof glass, requiring approved access to pass through to the main customer space and data center. Our Network Operations Center is also adjacent to the lobby where our professional staff will be happy to check you in. Once you have passed through the mantrap into your available workspace, you will have access to offices, staging areas and the brand new zColo break room. We understand that technicians often have to work crazy hours and need a space to actually relax during a grueling work day. Our new break room was designed with technicians in mind. These new break rooms will boast stylish and comfortable seating for customers. While there, enjoy a complimentary soda and check the scores on ESPN. Finally, enjoy a game of foosball with your colleagues - bragging rights included. Technicians have an incredibly difficult job. We want to make it a little more enjoyable. You may be wondering, “when does my local facility get a foosball table?” The answer : We’re working on it. We will begin rolling out this new look around the world as we continue to expand and invest in our growing portfolio. Meanwhile, if you’re looking for new space in Dallas, check out our Dallas webpage.
Our conference room is available for any customer to use. Please see the NOC tor reserve it 24/7.
Our ample parking lot is enclosed by a security gate, so you never have to worry.
Hannah Howard
1100 Empire Central Pl, Dallas boasts 2 unidirectional mantraps made from bullet proof glass for ultimate security.
How zColo can help your company prepare for any disaster
Our new break rooms offer televisions tuned to ESPN to catch up on your favorite team.
This location offers plenty of staging space - including the power and comfort you need to get the job done.
Enjoy a complementary soda in our stylish, new break room - along with a round of foosball.
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California Bound Hannah Howard Bink
zColo has been making some major moves lately in the Golden State. With recent expansions in Silicon Valley, Los Angeles and San Diego, zColo now has over 300,000 square feet of data center space in California. Most importantly, our facilities are interconnection rich and can easily tether to our expanding fiber backbone in the state. With Zayo's recent acquisition of Electric Lightwave, we now have a unique subsea cable route up the California coast. This long-haul route complements existing long haul routes up the coast and dense metro networks in California metro markets, now including Sacramento. Standing Out in Silicon Valley In November 2016, we announced our expansion into our first Silicon Valley location -- 5101 Lafayette Street in Santa Clara. Located directly across the street from Levi Stadium and the Great America Amtrak Station, this location is fun and easy to visit. (A perfect spot for a tailgate party? Stay tuned!) But this site is not only good for a good time. It includes 26,900 total square feet, has three megawatts (MW) of critical power and connects to multiple data centers in Silicon Valley via Zayo owned fiber assets. The facility also includes high-efficiency power and cooling infrastructure, seismic reinforcement to “1.5” and proximity to Zayo’s long haul dark fiber routes between San Francisco and Los Angeles. “We have long targeted Northern California as an expansion opportunity for our zColo data center business. The quality and high-power density of this facility is perfectly matched to the requirements of our leading-edge, Bay Area customers,” said TJ Karklins, SVP of zColo. Going Big in Downtown LA In April 2017, we announced another major California expansion, this time in Los Angeles. One Wilshire is the West Coast’s most connected facility, with connectivity to 240 networks and nearly 110 cloud and IT service providers. zColo is taking over the entire 29th floor with 2 MW of power. This location is a clear complement to our existing Tier III equivalent facilities in nearby Irvine. Customers can grow at scale in Irvine and connect back to One Wilshire via Zayo’s immense, local fiber network. Customers within the building will be able to leverage zColo’s interconnect expertise as we build out multiple fiber conduits throughout One Wilshire itself. Finally, One Wilshire is one of the most important carrier hotels in the world, offering unparalleled connectivity between North America and Asia’s Pacific coast. This is an optimal location for companies that want to facilitate TransPacific business. Making Waves in San Diego Finally, in May 2017, we added two San Diego locations to zColo’s California portfolio. The two data centers, located at 12270 World Trade Drive and 9606 Aero Drive, total more than 100,000 square feet of space and 2 megawatts (MW) of critical power, with additional power available. The San Diego facilities will provide extensive interconnection and access to Zayo’s fiber backbone in California, which now encompasses more than 8,700 route miles. Zayo’s high-count fiber also connects to multiple landing stations providing subsea cable access up the California coast and to the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. California is the gateway to the Pacific -- and the the global leader in tech and media. Continued progress and innovation require communications infrastructure -- secure, high- performance and highly interconnected. We are excited to bring our customers new colocation and connectivity options.
Colorado is the second fastest growing state in the U.S. According to Richard Wobbekind, senior associate dean for academic programs at the University of Colorado, “Colorado will remain one of the top growth states nationally… We benefit from being a very desirable state where people want to live and work, allowing us to attract top talent.” A spirit of collaboration, creative attitude and pro-business environment is at the heart of business growth in Colorado. Across 14 major industry sectors, including seven STEM-based advanced industries, companies from diverse sectors are attracted to the wealth of resources that allow them to get in the game and make a name for themselves when doing business in Colorado. But what keeps our industries thriving? Colorado employers, from Fortune 500 companies to homegrown startups, know they can depend on support from a network of like-minded industry partners and a drive for innovation. I am fortunate to work closely with many CIOs throughout Colorado who are making this state a technology hub. And Zayo is right there with them, driving innovation for the region and the industry alike. A local footprint as big as the Rockies The bulk of Zayo’s engineering, customer support, operations, and product management leadership call Colorado home, with offices in Boulder, Downtown Denver and the Denver Technology Center (DTC). In addition, zColo, Zayo’s colocation division, boast three of the most powerful, interconnected data centers within minutes from the heart of the state’s capitol, including: 1500 Champa St in Downtown Denver 393 Inverness in DTC 6900 S Peoria in DTC - zColo’s Flagship Facility Connected by 1,500 route miles of Zayo fiber in Colorado, our customers have IaaS functionality at both DTC locations and carrier-neutral connectivity to more than 20 carriers throughout the region. A deep dedication to Colorado’s startup community In 2007, Zayo was just a local, Colorado-based startup, eventually growing to the industry leader it is today. Given our roots, we continue to involve ourselves in the Front Range’s vibrant startup and entrepreneurial community -- always giving back. Zayo is a dedicated partner to many of Colorado’s startup-focused organizations, including Denver, Boulder and Ft. Collins Startup Weeks, Boomtown, Built in Colorado and Silicon Flatirons Center to name a few. As an example, Zayo just completed a mentoring program with women entrepreneurs through our partnership with Galvanize Boulder, a startup accelerator. Zayo is also a deeply involved member of the Colorado Technology Association (CTA), Boulder Chamber of Commerce and Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, where we are dedicated to contributing our vibrant business community. Partnering with Colorado’s business leaders I have learned a lot working with IT leadership up and down the Front Range. Many of them share a common challenge: adopting a data center/cloud strategy that is high-performance, secure and can scale as they grow. Zayo’s Colorado data centers provide secure, high-performance space and power, with 100% availability. Most importantly, they provide interconnections to other carriers and connectivity to Zayo’s extensive fiber footprint. While other providers can only offer data center services, Zayo offers fully integrated infrastructure solutions -- a value-added “one stop shop.” Behind all of this high performance is a great Zayo team willing to partner with our customers and build strong long lasting relationships. And our customers agree. Colorado’s hometown team I have the privilege each and every day to work alongside people at Zayo who are the best in the business. When we partner with zColo, we are surrounded by professionals who have the passion for technology, an entrepreneurial spirit, and deep technical, as well as business, skills. From operations, to product management, service delivery or sales, you will get a consistent theme – zColo is an example of a team who collaborates, is customer focused and committed to excellence. Not to mention, they’re a ton of fun! Zayo has it all – a powerful set of capabilities, the industry’s top caliber employees, a desire to serve the incubator and accelerator communities, and a customer base that is growing substantially. We are committed to growing Colorado’s economy and remaining a leader in our industry. We’re proud to be from Colorado, and are happy to show you around any time.
Louise Atkinson Regional Sales Director, Rocky Mountain Region
Kevin Bauder and Matt Heffernan striking a pose
Steve Montegue, Trevor Woods, Nicholas Hereford, Hannah Bink, TJ Karklins, Louise Atkinson & Joe Chivarie at a Denver Nuggets game celebrating the recent expansion of zColo's 1500 Champa location in Denver with customers
Team Members: Randi Pilon, Brandon McGill, Kyle Borner & Brianne McCoy.
Team Members: Erin Weed, Daniel Yamagishi, Jessica Charlesworth & Marcus Anderson
DCM, Joshua Fernandez, working on his long game
Cody Schnakenburg serving as a judge for the Technology Student Association's Colorado student competitions
Matt Heffernan, Greg Friedman, Lisa DuranTello, & Hannah Bink at a team outing
Cherry Creek Mortgage Company (CCMC) has had a relationship with Zayo for almost 10 years. CCMC is a privately owned and operated full-service mortgage banking company founded in l987 here in Colorado. Its customers have come to count on them for flexibility, communications, and attention to detail. As part of their services offering, CCMC has relied on zColo’s infrastructure to support their growing environment. CCMC CIO, Mike Hole, says “Zayo has been a strategic partner from the beginning. We wanted a provider who understood our needs and could provide an environment with the uptime and accessibility that our end customers expect. Not only has Zayo been a partner with our colocation initiatives, they have recently begun providing us connectivity through their connect to cloud offering. We look to many more years of success in the Zayo relationship."
Aaron Shelley
Why IaaS for Healthcare, and why now?
The complexity of the digital universe in healthcare is staggering. Healthcare is experiencing a data explosion—from mHealth apps to medical devices to EHR to telehealth and other technologies—the volume, variety, and velocity of which are compounding rapidly. With this data explosion comes an increasing demand for shorter response times and meaningful insights into what many are calling the new “information-centric care model.” Extensive information sharing and processing of both clinical data (EHR, PACS/RIS, HIE, etc.) and nonclinical data (financial, operational, and HR) are transpiring between providers, payers, and patients. Patients as consumers now expect to engage with their providers using digital interactions in order to receive faster, more flexible health services. All of these pressures are leading to petabyte-sized waves of on-demand, real-time data that are putting strains on traditional IT infrastructures. Legacy networking, storage, and server technologies that are outdated, slow, and siloed are not equipped to handle the magnitude of it all, let alone able to translate all that data into the meaningful insights that are needed at the point of care and beyond. Nor are they able to handle the advanced security threats that are on the rise across the industry. Take the case of outdated tape storage technology coupled with the spike in ransomware attacks. A single ransomware incident like those that recently occurred at hospitals in California, Kentucky, and Maryland threatened to take the entire hospital/facility offline. Restoring data from an incident like this could result in costly, service-impacting downtime. The cloud is gaining ground The cloud, specifically Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), with its cost efficiency and inherent flexibility and scalability, may offer the answer to this rapidly expanding, on-demand exchange. Market data supports the adoption of cloud infrastructure. The market for healthcare cloud computing as a whole is growing quickly with an estimated worth of $6.8 billion USD by 20181, and a CAGR of 20 percent between now and 20232. According to a 2014 HIMSS Analytics Cloud Survey, over half of those not currently using cloud services said that they anticipate using them in the future, with an estimated 18 percent indicating that they intend to migrate to IaaS in the next few years3. The many benefits of IaaS IaaS presents a number of benefits in addressing the shift to an information-centric care model. These advantages include: Access to modernized systems: Offering an enhanced level of IT convergence, including on-demand access to computing and large storage facilities helps providers keep pace with the data demands of their organization. Staying up to date also means being able to better respond to a changing and evolving regulatory landscape, as is the case concerning U.S. government programs like the Affordable Care Act, Meaningful Use, and MACRA. Reduced capital expenditures: New value-based care payment models across the healthcare industry are putting strains on already thin margins. Freeing up capital and relying on flexible pay-for-use options provide the cost efficiencies needed to address new quality measures. The ability to scale up or down to meet demand: Data demands evolve, whether from expanding EHRs, short-term or long-term clinical trials, or programs that might look to integrate analytics platforms. Surges in data exchange, for instance, can be managed on demand, archived, and shared with other physicians through the cloud. Support for mission- and life-critical applications: Resilient and fault-tolerant data centers featuring redundant power, cooling, and network connectivity provide the requirements needed to keep mission-and life-critical applications running and accessible. Security: The latest security technologies and healthcare security experts help protect ePHI while helping to meet HIPAA regulations. Disaster recovery and backup services are just one example of how providers can use IaaS to help better meet HIPAA’s mandate for ‘a contingency plan to insure continued ePHI availability during emergencies or disasters.’ Integrated healthcare-oriented networks: IaaS supports shared clinical research and large data sets with advanced statistical analyses. Better mHealth and telehealth: Both are more secure and include record sharing, teleconferencing, and data monitoring. Zayo Cloud Infrastructure Why it’s a perfect fit for today’s information-centric care model With 65 percent of U.S. News’ “Best Hospitals” using Zayo’s global network infrastructure, you can be assured that we have the scale and reach to support the rapid growth and technological evolution happening in healthcare. With Zayo, you can look to increase efficiencies, improve patient satisfaction and reduce the cost of delivering higher quality care—objectives in line with the IHI Triple Aim. Zayo’s healthcare hosting solution is a cost-efficient, scalable, interconnected infrastructure that handles your evolving connectivity requirements, all while maintaining the security of the health information and systems it supports. Our IaaS services enable providers to scale their infrastructure to their growth and manage their costs through customized private -cloud and bare-metal solutions. We also offer value-added managed services for additional performance, security, scalability, and continuity. Delivering on what matters most: Security With healthcare becoming a leading target for malicious cyberattacks, protecting your growing pool of patient data becomes that much more critical. To offer a level of protection beyond Zayo’s secure infrastructure, we offer our customers a next-generation threat-management platform providing managed firewall, intrusion detection, managed VPN, patch management, and antivirus protection services. By constantly evaluating the latest technologies, we can tailor a security posture to your exact requirements and keep it current to withstand newly emerging threats. Compliance When it comes to HIPAA, the stakes just got higher. The new ruling that extends to all those in the information chain of custody, requiring that all remain compliant, makes outsourcing a bit more difficult. It is absolutely critical that you choose an infrastructure provider that takes HIPAA compliance as seriously as you do. Zayo’s portfolio of data center includes facilities that are HIPAA and PCI compliant and SOC 1 Type 2, SOC 2 Type 2, and SOC 3 certified. In addition to HIPAA, Zayo’s policies and procedures have been audited for compliance with sections. A diverse colocation portfolio The seventh largest data center provider in North America, Zayo’s secure colocation facilities are protected with biometric scanners, keycard access, and 24x7 video surveillance and monitoring. Our extensive data center footprint ensures that your organization stays operational so that you can deliver uninterrupted, quality care. Similarly, our carrier-neutral connectivity with access to over 66 of the world’s largest ISPs and content providers and 9.9 million miles of Zayo fiber mean we can handle the deluge of big data and big bandwidth without a problem. Expansive network connectivity owned by Zayo Zayo’s fiber networks span the globe to offer fast, dedicated access to healthcare communities worldwide—connecting you with the speed and access needed to reach collaborating hospitals, biosciences, health insurance carriers, and the patients you serve. Our solutions range from dark fiber infrastructure that you light and manage to a range of IT solutions. We also offer critical network diversity and Disaster Recovery as a Service, so an outage won’t disrupt mission, and life-critical services. Our near-real-time latency enables sharing of bandwidth-heavy files quickly. And because we own the network, we’re able to customize your solution to your exact requirements while offering you competitive pricing models. Scalable storage with maximum flexibility Zayo’s flexible managed storage solutions deliver capacity, performance, and scalability tailored to meet your unique needs. Whether your challenge is big data, virtualized desktop environments, or heavy reliance on the cloud -- we offer a massively scalable enterprise-grade storage platform that will meet your needs today, tomorrow, and for years to come. One vendor, many advantages One vendor for all of your cloud infrastructure, colocation, and connectivity needs translates to easier management, from integration to billing to meeting security and compliance requirements. Our infrastructure experts will work with you to understand the security, performance, elasticity and support requirements of every workload your healthcare organization relies on, designing a federated cloud infrastructure and advanced connectivity solution that is tailored, purpose built, and scalable on demand with your evolving needs. Zayo offers competitive SLAs with guaranteed uptime. If you require a Business Associate Agreement (BAA), we can do that, too. What’s next The on-demand, ever-changing digital era has very much taken hold in healthcare. Navigating the waters of this information-centric care ecosystem requires a partner that will deliver the security, capacity, and flexibility needed. Zayo is the ideal technology partner. Visit zayo.com 1. Transparency Market Research, “Cloud Computing Market In Healthcare Industry: Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Trends and Forecast 2012—2018.” 2. https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/healthcare-cloud- computing-market 3. http://s3.amazonaws.com/rdcms-himss/files/production/public/ FileDownloads/Final%20Report%20061214.pdf
The rise of information-centric care & its impact on IT
“Healthcare organizations considering IaaS solutions need to pay close attention to all the components that make up the solution to ensure that the entire deployment is HIPAA compliant.” — Bill Siwicki | Healthcare IT News
Go West Young Man
Greg McGraw, CEO of MacStadium, discusses their innovative platform and why zColo was the obvious choice as they expanded in Las Vegas. by Travis Howick
zColo had the opportunity to have a conversation with MacStadium’s CEO Greg McGraw on the company, the challenges of rapid growth and his selection of Zayo as a colocation provider. McGraw is forthcoming on the lessons he’s learned as an entrepreneur. He has guided the growth of the company, which now serves more than 2,500 clients in over 55 countries. MacStadium is recognized for its diverse network and dedicated Mac managed hosting solutions for a wide variety of enterprise, sandbox, and disaster recovery applications. The company is now #44 in the 2016 INC 5000 and #20 in the 2016 Deloitte Technology Fast 500 and as the fastest growing, Mac-centric private cloud hosting provider in the world. What is MacStadium? MacStadium is the leading managed hosting solution provider offering customers dedicated Apple and/or cross-platform compliant cloud infrastructure around the world. We are the Mac hosting authority with high-performance, dedicated Apple Mac servers available on-demand and Innovative Hosted Mac Private Cloud solutions for DevOps, SaaS & Enterprise featuring All-flash SAN for CI/CD. MacStadium has grown to be the largest managed hosting provider of over 9,000+ Mac minis and Mac Pros in the world, with 2,500+ customers from over 55 countries. Can you tell me a little about the circumstance that led you to search for colocation services? MacStadium acquired a long-standing Mac hosting company located in Las Vegas in April 2016. That company had been colocated at a large data center facility for more than a decade. However, as part of MacStadium's global build-out strategy, it quickly became clear its facility was not going to be adequate. After a highly competitive process between zColo and another high-performing data center in Las Vegas, MacStadium was pleased to select zColo for more than 550 square feet of space and 200 kW of power. Why did you choose zColo over other colocation providers? There were several key factors that supported our decision to select Zayo for our Western U.S. data center provider. First, because we deploy unique, patented rack infrastructure for Apple servers, we require co-located cage space and customized power distribution systems. zColo was not only able to meet our current and future space requirements but they also designed a multi-phase power distribution option to accommodate our unique Apple servers plus our traditional storage area network and switching infrastructure. zColo also offered a flexible contracting arrangement that more closely matched our success-based customer builds with our financial commitment. How has your business expanded over the last three years, and what does the future of MacStadium look like? MacStadium has experienced over a 5,000 percent increase in our business over the past three years. Our customers demand high performance, high availability and geographic diversity for their managed private cloud environments. zColo's data center footprint in the U.S. and expanding facilities management provides us with multiple options and a flexible partnership that will enable us to continue serving our clients for years to come. What are the challenges you’ve faced in scaling the business quickly? The four keys to our rapid growth and success center around innovation, people, partnerships and capital. Turning innovative ideas into patented processes has allowed us to develop repeatable, scalable solutions that help our customers automate continuous mobile application iOS software development. As a result, MacStadium has grown to become the largest provider of private cloud environments for Apple computing needs. More than two-thirds of our employees are engineers who interact daily with our clients to solve complex problems. To continue to scale our business rapidly takes strong partnerships with companies like Zayo delivering state-of-the-art, power efficient data center facilities and our equipment leasing partners to make sure that cost-effective financing of our capital intensive business never becomes an impediment to growth. What key lessons would you share with other entrepreneurial or high-growth companies? I've had the good fortune to lead or help several technology start-ups over the past decade. The important takeaways from those experiences are still very valuable today. First is to recognize that technology "is but people 'do'". Hire the best and brightest minds that you can afford and give them a carte blanche voice when it comes to expressing opinions or ideas. There are countless examples of fantastic technology that never made it off the launch pad because no one figured out the best way to execute. Second, expect the unexpected but don't be surprised. High-growth companies always make a course correction or two along the way. It's an important part of success. Always have a plan B scenario that could eliminate any surprises when something doesn't go according to plan A. And finally, set realistic expectations. Success is not a goal, it's a result. Find something that works, something that you're good at and enjoy and jump in with both feet to see it through. What trends do you see in the industry? MacStadium sits squarely right in the middle of the software application development ecosystem. Everyone talks about 'moving to the cloud' and certainly the research supports a high double digit growth rate in cloud deployment, particularly with private or hybrid clouds. This is driven by a high demand for more reliable and faster mobile software development. The irony, however, is that all clouds run on hardware. Traditional businesses across many industries are turning to software enablement, particularly mobile accessibility, to differentiate themselves from competitors. The growing trend in more agile software development methodologies is driving demand for higher performing hardware and computing environments to achieve this. Looking ahead five years, where do you see MacStadium? Because of the increasing demand for scalable, secure private cloud environments supporting mobile applications, we fully expect to continue our current growth trajectory to build and deliver a Mac based solution for the over 10,000,000 and growing iOS software developers in multiple data centers worldwide.
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Owning Your Own Infrastructure vs Utilizing Public Cloud Guest Writer: Dan Gannon
Congratulations, you’ve developed the next great SaaS solution. Your company is growing rapidly, and product development is proceeding on schedule, increasing sales and marketing efforts and adding headcount. Whether you’re a startup company just completing your Series A funding or a 5-year old company getting ready to file for an IPO, when you hit that point of accelerated growth it’s an exciting time, but you have decisions to make. One of the biggest: how do you manage your growing IT needs? Do you build out physical infrastructure or utilize the public cloud? Many companies had made the move to public cloud providers, such as AWS and Azure. The public cloud touts the benefits of ease of use, cost-effectiveness, flexibility, reliability and security. This may be a solution to consider when starting out, but when you hit the accelerated growth, issues may arise. Companies start to see rising costs associated with higher usage rates. Once data is inside a given repository, it becomes much more difficult and expensive to move. If your entire environment is in the public cloud and there is an outage, lost revenue due to downtime is another factor. There is another option: Utilizing a capital lease and colocation space -- specifically via an asset-backed IT equipment lease. This approach provides companies an effective way to acquire equipment. The lease is secured only by the IT hardware itself. It does not require personal guarantees, lines of credit, or restrictive covenants. This allows companies to avoid the need for a lot of upfront capital, freeing it up for product development, marketing and sales. It enables the owners of startup, venture -backed and emerging growth companies the ability to preserve their equity and avoid selling early shares in the company until the revenues are larger and will attract a higher valuation. Rapid company growth can lead to the sudden need for expensive equipment as well as a place to put it. The leasing process is relatively quick, which allows companies to rapidly put equipment in place and scale quickly as the business grows. Rather than looking at a large-scale capital expense when rapid growth occurs, leasing provides an alternative approach that allows companies to pay for ongoing needs as an monthly expense. In addition to leasing equipment, utilizing a colocation facility provides additional cost savings and downtime risk reduction. Leasing IT equipment while utilizing a colocation facility provides greater control of your infrastructure (leading to greater control over your company), allows you to preserve precious capital. Dan Gannon Senior Director, Data Sales dgannon@datasales.com Data Sales is a 45 year old IT equipment leasing company headquartered in Minneapolis MN.
Anthony (Tony) Estes was raised in Colorado where he served as a firefighter for several years. His experience in managing stressful situations segued nicely into a challenging new career in data centers, where every day presents new challenges. Today, Tony serves as the data center manager of one of zColo’s most in-demand facilities - 21635 Red Rum Dr in Ashburn, VA. This facility offers 24/7/365 manned security, cloud infrastructure and a full array of remote hands professional services - so no day is ever boring. In his spare time Tony enjoys activities like exploring the history of D.C., mountain biking, hiking, snowboarding, reading and spending time with his daughters. 1. What do customers need to know about Zayo’s data center technicians? The data center technicians at Zayo are responsible for so much . They handle tier 1 remote hand tickets, rack and stack, cabling, running cross connects, access control, shipping and handling, security walk throughs, monitoring building alarms, and assist with customer installations. They are also the in house faces that our customers see on a day to day basis for assistance at the data center. These technicians really become experienced in all aspects of the data center and become very well rounded employees that can transition into any department. Many individuals with management or leadership roles within Zayo have had their start initially as a data center technician. 2. What are some major changes customer can expect at zColo's Ashburn facility in 2017? It is an exciting time at the Ashburn zColo Data Center. Last September, we made a big change and moved the data center’s main entrance. The new main entrance is located near the facility’s street entrance. This entrance is a more secure and more convenient location than what we had previously. The entrance is also in a brand new building created to connect the current data center building with planned Data Centers 07 and 08 . We are also proud to have added DC-06 which completed in October of 2016. With DC-06 we added 5,000 square feet of data center space. DC07 is currently under development with 25,000 square feet of data center white space. This is slated to release early third quarter of 2017. 3. What certifications does the Ashburn facility have? Are there any new ones planned? The Ashburn Data Center is a Tier III equivalent facility and has the following accreditation: SSAE 16, SOC 2, SOC 3, PCI, GLBA and HIPAA. The newest accreditation is underway and we have current plans to become FISMA certified. 4. How do I create a support hands ticket? Creating a ticket can be done on a smartphone. Just send an email to: support@zayo.com. Doing so will create your ticket capturing all the details within the email. Just be as specific and detailed as possible. This will help our technicians better understand and identify what is being requested. You can also submit support tickets through Tranzact (zayo.com/tranzact/) . Beginning July 17, 2017 zColo will also be launching a new Technical Support Desk. You will be able to call them at 877-926-5687 for fully-trained and specialized colocation support. 5. Where are the best places to eat near the Ashburn facility? Ford’s Fish Shack serves a great salmon dish and is known for having great seafood. Clyde’s has fantastic hot wings and steaks. We are big fans of the burgers and dipping sauces at Burger 21. Cava Grill has got it down with their take on quick and ready to eat Mediterranean bowls. Ashburn is also a hotspot for Peruvian rotisserie chicken. You can’t go wrong if you check out Fire Brick Chicken or The Pollo Factory. Finally, The Lost Rhino Brewing Company is very close by and has a great beer selection and live music on Friday evenings. Try the Face Plant IPA.
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