The Internet is often described as the 21st-century equivalent of the 19th-century railroad network: locations without access to it are left off the economic map, while locations with the best access are poised for growth. That’s why cities and towns have been trying to spur economic growth by building their own broadband access networks.

But does municipal broadband really make a difference to local business? And do higher network speeds have proportionally higher impacts? The evidence is still anecdotal, but it’s mounting. This is one of those anecdotes.
 

Fiber-to-the-Premises in Jackson

At least three companies in Jackson are taking advantage of this state-of-the-art network to deliver technology-based services and applications to the businesses of Jackson and beyond: Trinity Solutions, Xpert Systems Integration, and Interworks. All of these companies actually locate servers in Jackson Energy’s operations center.

These three companies have positioned themselves as providers of IT support services for small businesses. “We’re an IT department for a company that’s too small for an IT department,” says Paul Brian, president of Interworks.

“Whether it’s an attorney, a doctor’s office, or real estate, why not let companies keep doing what they’re doing and we’ll do the IT work for them?” asks Ted Beck, president of Xpert Systems Integration. “We do the infrastructure all the way up to the end-user experience.”

And Michael Laffoon, CEO of Trinity Solutions says, “We provide any type of computer solution for the west Tennessee area -- we’ve written software applications, we’ve done networks with firewalls, and all the way down to troubleshooting why your printer isn’t working.”
 

From Daily Backups to Hosted Services

Interworks’ primary application is offsite backup, which ensures the security and safety of business-critical information. A software client installed on the customer’s server automatically backs up any changed files on a daily basis to the cluster of servers that Interworks maintains in Jackson Energy’s operations center. “The nice thing about it is that since it’s done over the Internet, it doesn’t matter where the client is,” says Brian. “I’ve got one client backing up data that’s a freight liner dealership based in British Columbia.”

For customers who don’t want to manage their servers locally, Trinity Solutions maintains servers for them in Jackson Energy’s operations center. The customers’ applications run on these remote servers, which they can access over the network with a PC or a terminal (essentially a keyboard, mouse, and monitor.) “We’ve had great success with the customers … not having a server in each office, but having a central server through which everyone can access their applications,” says Laffoon. Like Interworks, Trinity also provides offsite backup services.

Xpert Systems Integration offers Microsoft Office on a software-as-a-service model.

Xpert Systems Integration has taken this model a step further. Customers can not only access their own applications on the servers XSI maintains in Jackson Energy’s operations center; they can also purchase software as a service from XSI. For a monthly per-user fee, customers have remote access to the Microsoft Office suite from any PC or terminal.

This arrangement means they don’t have to worry about buying software upgrades or about upgrading their servers to accommodate newer software versions. “The service flattens out our customers’ expenditures,” says Beck. "As soon as we certify Office 2007, they’ll get it without any change in price.”

Network-based office applications are increasingly becoming available from large companies, including Microsoft and Google. But Beck still sees a bright future for smaller companies like his, which can offer the personal touch: “We won’t compete with those guys, but we may resell their stuff… The most important relationship is with the customer, and that’s what we’ve been building.”
 

Why Fiber is Important

Jackson’s fiber network had, and still has, a profound effect on the way these three companies do business. XSI’s hosted Microsoft Office service was directly inspired by Jackson Energy’s deployment of fiber to the premises. “When we saw the network getting built, we started thinking it would be a good entry point to provide services to people in our area that benefit from this high speed and reliable backbone,” says Beck. “We saw an opportunity to realize and take advantage of this network by becoming an applications service provider.”

For Trinity Solutions, the deployment of fiber optics meant not having to deal with so many complaints about Internet outages. “The JEA fiber network is strong. It’s secure. It’s not always going up and down,” says Laffoon. “We don’t get a lot of calls from our customers saying, ‘Hey, I can’t get on the Internet today.’ When we do get those calls, they’re usually not on the JEA fiber network.”

The beauty of fiber: A phone call is all that's needed to turn up the bandwidth.

And the dynamic bandwidth allocation on the fiber network gives these companies the tools they need to support continued growth. “Whether we need more bandwidth in our office or in the operations center for our backup business, it’s just a matter of making a phone call to turn up the bandwidth,” says Brian. Before the fiber network was available, Interworks could only get additional bandwidth by ordering more T1 lines and waiting for them to be physically put in the ground.

With the capacious bandwidth of fiber, companies like Xpert Systems Integration are free to dream up new ways to build their businesses. Beck says he’s considering several possible new services: “We’re looking at … moving further into the Microsoft direction with applications like Exchange 2007, as well as exploring some VOIP add-ons. We’re also considering offering document management services where companies can save images to the network from copy machines. And we’re investigating things like video for surveillance.”