Every great business region has great infrastructure. It’s important, because it creates growth opportunities not just for the large companies but for those that are not large (yet). 

One of the points we have often heard from data-intensive companies that need outstanding communications is that Wilmington does not have reliable, consistent Internet. It impacts small business in a big way, and it impedes our ability to become a great place to inspire entrepreneurs.

Think about the last time your company’s Internet access felt sluggish – or worse, went down. What did that cost you? 

Some businesses just can’t operate without access to the Web. Especially vulnerable are those that have moved to the cloud, whether for applications like Salesforce.com or for infrastructure systems, where the pain of managing networks and servers is abolished by the move. But, if all of your work is in the cloud, and your Internet service goes down for even half of a day, how do you survive?

The fact is, many companies take a big hit from service outages. Imagine being the customer of a company whose Internet was down, and you couldn’t do a background check, close on a loan, or make a stock trade. 

Obviously, Internet access is critical for companies to be able to compete in the global market. But it is just as critical for small businesses as they need to be able to act like bigger businesses. It’s already hard to convince a potential customer to choose your firm over a larger firm in Atlanta – but you’ll never keep that client if your not “always on” through reliable Internet.

Smaller cities like Wilmington have had trouble keeping up with the big cities, where the large Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have installed ultra high-speed solutions. Gigabit Ethernet has been dangled in front of other cities like Raleigh and Durham, and AT&T has promised some very high speed Internet coming soon … but not to Wilmington. We’re too small for them, at least initially.

Yet even those products still don’t have guarantees, such as uptime, quantity and quality. They may be awesome – but small businesses need to be sure they’re reading the fine print. If your business is better for being in a data center but your provider is not making a commitment to get you to that data center, you’re not ahead of the game.

Businesses have been held back from using services that make them more efficient – like hosted infrastructure – because of the high cost of Dedicated Internet Access. Our businesses need to have that same level of confidence in their Internet that we have when in turning on a water faucet – it just works.

Starting in January, the cost of high quality, Dedicated Internet Access will be reduced. This does more than put us on an even keel with larger markets; this makes us more competitive. 

Shaun Olsen is the CEO of CloudWyze. CloudWyze was created to help companies focus and perform at their optimal level by crafting and executing custom technology plans for businesses of every type and size. To learn more about CloudWyze, visit www.CloudWyze.com. Shaun can be reached at [email protected] or 910-795-1000.