Hurricanes, tornadoes and flooding are some of the concerns for businesses in a low-lying tropical climate. A disaster recovery plan for mitigating the loss caused by one of these inevitable natural disasters is mandatory. ITS Fiber, with its roots as the local telephone provider in rural Indiantown, Florida, saw its location as a key asset in helping businesses integrate disaster recovery into their standard operating processes, such that disaster recovery becomes a strategic advantage.

Located approximately 30 miles from the coast and at a relatively high elevation, flooding is not an issue for the ITS Fiber datacenter. The datacenter is built on the foundation of a telco-grade central office that is the prototype for further expansion. The network is impervious to hurricane-force winds, as it is 100% underground. Through a creative partnership with Martin County, ITS Fiber built an all fiber network to extend beyond its rural footprint to the urban coastal areas.

ITS Fiber’s approach may point to a bigger trend of the localization of the datacenter. In this case, the servers and PBXs that once would have been within the confines of the business location are now virtualized in a local datacenter. The advantage to the business is that they can focus on their business, while the datacenter focuses on ensuring that their data is secure, backed-up and available. This always-on capability is only possible because of the robust fiber connection between the business and the datacenter.

Another, somewhat intangible benefit to having a local datacenter is that the business owner knows where her data is physically located and knows who is managing the data. Austin Zobec IT Administrator of PCC & F Accounting and Finance described the importance of the local connection when he said,

“A big thing for our partners was to touch it. They wanted to see where our data was going to be, as opposed to, ‘Oh yeah, we are going to host it out in the cloud in Texas.’….Now, that we have a big enough pipe to go off-site with our back-ups, the next step was who we choose and we were really excited to hear that Jeff (Leslie, CEO ITS Telecom) had the SOC-2, Type-2 certificate and saying that they were now a secure site…”

As alluded to in the above video, ITS Fiber is taking the concept of disaster recovery one step further with the addition of disaster recovery desks. In this case, the business would have a physical place for their employees to go, in the event that their office was out of commission. With a modular approach to expanding its datacenter capabilities, ITS Fiber is still in the early stages of its potential to change the way businesses in South Florida deal with their IT infrastructure needs.

Note: Viodi was originally commissioned to film and edit the above video for Calix, while further filming and edits were done on behalf of ITS Telecom.