10 years ago most businesses could get away with having just 1.5 Mb of bandwidth to the Internet.  Today that doesn’t touch the surface on what is needed, particularly if you’re utilizing your connection to access many of the applications now available.  As SaaS (Software as a Service) models continue to grow and more and more businesses reach outside of their LANS for dial tone, CRM, ERP, PLM, SCM, SRM type applications, the need for bigger and better bandwidth will always be needed.  I stuck dial tone in the list above because now more than ever more and more businesses are looking to get a hosted PBX – Telesphere is a company that seems to have a grasp on this technology.

With cloud computing software designers can design, build, and deliver services that allow clients to easily access their applications from virtually any location.  IBM seems to be positioned extremely well to assist many of the large software providers with implementing a SaaS strategy.  Today, increased demand for Internet access is directly driven by the need for business applications.

Most of the carriers will bond T-1′s to provide their customers 3.0 – 9.0 Mb of access, but most have realized that to be positioned for the future they have to provide ethernet grade Internet access.  Qwest has led the way in their 14 states providing ELA (Ethernet LAN Access) to the Internet over their QMOE (Qwest Metro Optical Ethernet) backbone.  TW Telecom, Integra, and XO offer great pricing on their EoC (Ethernet over Copper) offerings.  Be patient when you’re working to check availability and get quotes for this service as it can sometimes be a lengthy process.  As always, make sure that you’re working with a carrier agnostic agency so that you can get multiple pricing from one source.

Happy Surfing!