Healthcare Industry Still Stunted in the Paper Age

05/22/2012 by Leave a comment

Healthcare Electronic Medical Records (EMR)Recently, TechCrunch posted an article on the Healthcare industry pertaining to its’ slower migration towards the electronic age. This week, in response, one of our Sunlight bloggers reflects on this curbed cycle.

In the early 90s, a major insurance carrier in NYC converted their paper files to WORM optical disk, reducing 3 floors of cabinets to 25% of the space. Each insured individual was given a unique barcode, printed on an insurance card. This way documents could be scanned in and associated with that patient’s barcode and additions could be made automatically, eliminating the need for paper handling. Read more of this post

Filed under Dark Fiber, Fiber Optics, Telecom, Bandwidth, Managed Services, Healthcare, Technology, Security, Reliability

An Education Outlook: Indirect Benefits of a Private Fiber Network

05/08/2012 by Leave a comment

Schoolboy in Library In a past post, we discussed the distinctions amongst private and traditional wide area networks (WANs). While it is frequently easy to spot some of the direct advantages of a private network, the indirect outcomes often go unnoticed. This week we bring to you inside insight from the education sector regarding these “indirect” benefits.

When asked to write a blog on K-12 districts and our WAN service, I spent some time reflecting on the numerous deals we’ve completed and our reasons for success. After taking some Aleve for my headache, I decided to recount a conversation I had with an IT Director who recently retired from one of the earlier and larger school districts that we service. I met him at another function where he told me of his recent retirement party and some of the accolades he received from his peers. I thought he was going to wax poetically that with the new capacity our network provided, the district was able to enhance the school’s distance learning capabilities, improve efficiencies of the administrative staff and teachers’ information systems, and provide more applications for the students. Understandably, I was a little thrown when he told me of the sincerity and well wishes he received from the staff of the Attendance Office and how they had thanked him for his efforts. Read more of this post

Filed under Customer, Education, Erate, K-12, Managed Services, Technology, Telecom, WAN, Wide Area Networks

Face-off: Private Fiber vs. “Traditional” Wide Area Networks

02/28/2012 by 2 Comments

There are basically two types of wide area networks available today:  private fiber networks and what we’ll refer to as a “traditional” network for this discussion.  In a private fiber network, all buildings in the network are connected via a dedicated fiber optic link.  A “traditional” network, on the other hand, connects each building to one another through the public cloud.  Of course, there are advantages and disadvantages to each network.

Security

  • Private fiber WAN
    • Dedicated physical infrastructure ensures internal data does not pass through any public infrastructure, virtually eliminating any security threat.
    • Network architecture allows for a single gateway to outside services such as voice, internet, etc. limiting external security risks.
  • Traditional WAN
    • All data, including internal data, passes through public switches.  VPNs and other security techniques must be relied on to protect data integrity.
    • Often, each location is a separate gateway to the public network enabling the possibility of outside security threats. Read more of this post

Filed under Fiber Optics, Infrastructure, Managed Services, Technology, Telecom, WAN, Wide Area Networks

IAAS: How we use our own network

01/31/2012 by 1 Comment

While we often promote the ways our customers benefit from using our product, this space provides the ability to share how we, Sunesys, benefit from using our own product. This example comes from the recent move of our virtual servers into the cloud by running them on an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IAAS) across our own network.

IAAS is a cloud service that leverages the multi-tenant scalability of virtualization products like VMWare and Citrix. It offers virtual co-location, hardware-on-demand, image level disaster recovery, metered usage, and many features that IT departments simply can’t do on their own. With the IAAS model, your internal IT staff is freed of hardware and facility support, allowing them to focus on business-line applications and the end user experience. Although there are some well known IAAS providers where you can build a virtual server and connect to it over the Internet within minutes, we chose a different route. Read more of this post

Filed under Cloud Computing, Colocation, Data Centers, IAAS, Infrastructure, Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Technology, Telecom

Sunlight, the Sunesys Blog

01/24/2012 by 1 Comment

Welcome to the first edition of Sunlight - a blog on what we at Sunesys feel is going on in the metro telecom industry. Over the next months and throughout the year, Sunlight will try to shed light on the trends in telecommunications in the metro marketplace, whether it be dark fiber, bandwidth services, cloud computing, wireless, wireline, etc.

When we first decided to create a blog, I wasn’t sure what we would write about, and I’m still not sure of all the things we will discuss.  Having spent more years than I care to remember (not due to the business but rather a reflection on my age) in the telecom industry, from the first days in cable TV to the present “cloud”, the one defining thing I can say about our trade is CHANGE!  Every day the communications industry changes and morphs to what is required to meet the demands of a global market.  From applications such as Facebook to cloud computing for commerce, our insatiable demand for bandwidth continues to grow at an astonishing pace. Read more of this post

Filed under Bandwidth, Technology, Telecom, Uncategorized

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