Edge Business Continuity Center

Ready for Business

The Grand Opening in September was spectacular. With nearly 300 attendees, gorgeous weather, a local broadcast news film crew and the Microsoft event truck - every detail was in place for a perfect day.

Since the Grand Opening, the construction and engineering teams have been working tirelessly to ensure all of our strategic deadlines have been met. Due to their efforts, data center activities will begin on schedule in November and some of our customers will begin to receive service through this new state-of-the-art facility.

The new data centers at the EdgeBCC have been designed differently than most traditional data centers. Rather than providing cooling through a raised floor design, the data centers in Altoona have been designed for higher density processing technologies, such as IBM BladeCenters, with cooling forced through the racks to keep equipment at the optimal operating temperatures. The facility's power has also been influenced by the next generation of technology with over 100 watts per square foot power capacity.

If you were unable to attend the Grand Opening, we would be happy to arrange an individual tour for your business. Please contact your Territory Account Manager or Travis Thompson directly to arrange a time.

Scott Riedel
Product Marketing Manager

Late Breaking News
Information Week just posted an article about the "Best and Worst Cities for Data Centers". Of the top 5 cities listed, 2 are in central Iowa. Read the article

LightEdge News

Commitment to Service
Kris Harris came to be part of the LightEdge team at the beginning of the year through the acquisition of Internet Express. As the founder/owner of Internet Express, Kris was essentially responsible for all of the activities of the company including building the infrastructure to a carrier-grade CLEC, and transitioning to a facility-based model rather than a simple ISP.

Due to her extensive experience and drive to "get things done", Kris was promoted to VP of Operations three months ago and given the task of overseeing the network overhaul and managing the Network Operations Center (NOC) department, including bringing additional rigor to our change management process. Since then, Kris has made significant progress in several areas that will positively impact network stability and service levels for clients.

Enabling Support
One of the first goals was to work with the support staff to ensure that they had the knowledge and the tools to perform their jobs well. Formalized training processes were strengthened and the team was paired up with the company's engineering staff to share and reinforce knowledge levels on multiple platforms. The group was restructured slightly to include a tiered support process with upper level support technicians assisting in more complicated or time consuming customer support issues. To leverage the skills of the entire company, the Des Moines and Quad Cities support departments were cross trained, and through our VoIP call center we are able to manage them as one consolidated team despite the geographical separation.

EdgeBCC "Go-live" Training
With LightEdge as the managing entity of the Edge Business Continuity Center, it gave our teams both the responsibility and opportunity to create the appropriate processes and training for our NOC team. In ramping up for the opening of the EdgeBCC, not only did the team have to be well versed on the network systems that are in place at the facility, but also the security measures that are necessary for a building of this type. Each member of the team has completed a security certification process to ensure that they are able to perform the duties to keep the building and premises secure and handle the needs of our clients during the declaration of a disaster event.

Network Upgrade
2006 saw a lot of activity related to the network. The work fell into several key areas: migration away from an ATM-centric design to a fully MPLS driven IP core, adding equipment to enhance our redundancy and fault tolerance and transitioning to a facility-based service model.  All these activities were geared towards improving the reliability, scalability and operational ease of the network.

Over the course of the year, new state-of-the-art, carrier-grade Cisco routers have been added to the Des Moines, Minneapolis and Quad Cities network points. This allowed us to extend the use of MPLS across the entire network core. Cisco Subscriber Management Service (SMS) routers have been installed at all POPs as well. We've also augmented the bandwidth available between data centers and other points-of-presence to allow multiple routes for traffic over larger capacity connections.

Equipment has been provisioned and implemented in many Central Offices (CO) to allow customers to connect to the Internet directly from the CO instead of relaying through the LightEdge data center. This creates fewer points of failure and allows customers to take advantage of some new technologies that allow high-speed access (up to 40 Mbps) over copper.

Additionally, through two major acquisitions in 2006, LightEdge has leveraged the infrastructure available to better support Eastern Iowa and Western Illinois. Additional points-of-presence in Cedar Rapids, Dubuque, Iowa City, Quad Cities and Peoria have allowed LightEdge to expand its footprint considerably and bring enterprise-grade managed services to these areas.

LightEdge Integrated Toolbar for Hosted PBX VoIP

Free Trial for Available Administrators

The LightEdge Integrated Toolbar makes it easy to access, modify and use the powerful features of your hosted PBX VoIP system form additional toolbars integrated into Microsoft Outlook and Internet Express. With the new toolbar, everyone in the office can quickly gain access to the most commonly used features without opening the Personal Web Portal.

Starting November 1st, LightEdge is allowing the head administrator of all of our Hosted PBX clients to trial the LightEdge Toolbar at no cost. In a time when everyone in business is being asked to do more with less, this toolbar gives your employees to have all of the most common VoIP features at their fingertips within an application that they are already utilizing.

An e-mail will be sent in November to administrators who qualify for the Free Trial with details on how to download the application and integrate it with your applications.

Converged Access Voice-over-IP

As its name suggests, a converged access trunk is created by combining voice traffic with the company's data network across a single high-speed connection to the LightEdge VoIP Gateway. Converged access enables a business to reduce or eliminate lines from local phone company and eliminate long distance charges between affiliated "on-net" branch offices without the need to purchase new handsets or retrain staff.

The LightEdge Converged Access Trunk is an ideal solution as it is completely flexible to your growing voice needs. It can be used as a permanent voice solution, or be part of a "cap and grow" transition to full Hosted PBX VoIP. The "cap and grow" model allows companies to grow over the capacities of their existing PBX without additional capital expense or gradually migrate users as the PBX reaches it's end of life.

• Reduces or eliminates telco lines
• Completely transparent migration
• Does not require new phones or retraining
• Eliminates long distance charges between affiliated "on-net" sites
• Long-term transition to fully hosted PBX
• Carrier-grade reliability and support
• Quality of Service (QoS) measures in place to distinguish and prioritize voice traffic to ensure call quality

For more information on Converged Access for your business,
contact your Territory Account Manager, 877-771-3343

Notifications

Password Enforcement for VoIP Personal Web Portal and Voice Mail Portal
Effective October 23rd, users of the VoIP Personal Web Portal and Voice Mail Portal will be required to change their passwords or passcodes every 60 days. This will positively impact the security of our telephony system, while still maintaining a flexible user environment.

For your convenience, you are allowed to rotate passwords (i.e. Password 1 for 60 days, Password 2 for 60 days, then back to password 1).

Password Policy User Manual (PDF file, requires Acrobat Reader)

Associated Computers Systems Technology Fair
The ACS Technology Fair will provide the latest information about new and upcoming technology solutions. This is an all day event held on three consecutive days, in three different locations!

The ACS Technology Fair is free and lunch is included.

“Server Performance/Virtualization & BladeCenter” - IBM
Latest update on IBM Servers & BladeCenter

“Keeping Cool & Charged Up” - Liebert
Power & Cooling Solutions to Protect & Support IT Systems

“Elements of Business Continuity” - LightEdge Solutions
Mitigating Risk through VoIP, WAN & Disaster Recovery Workspace

“Microsoft Product Road Map” - Microsoft
New Products: Office 2007, Windows Vista & SQL Server 2005

“Virtual Infrastructure” - VMware
Server Virtualization & Virtual Machines

“Server Protection” - Double-Take
Data Replication solutions for Protection, Availability & Recoverability

Register for the ACS Technology Fair

Events

Billing Changes
Through the acquisition of several companies this year, each with their own billing system and cycle, this year has been interesting to say the least. Until now, our accounting department has remained faithful to the billing cycles of each company, but at this time, however, we are implementing a new internal billing system that will better automate processes and allow a unified billing process across all customers. 

The following information details the changes that will be taking place over the next quarter to transition all customers to a single billing cycle.  Please read this information carefully to ensure that you understand the changes and how they affect your business.

LightEdge, Avalon and NexGen Billing Cycles
LightEdge Solutions
Customers are currently billed on the 1st with net 30 terms.

Former Avalon Networks
Customers are currently billed on the 1st with net 30 terms. 

Former NexGen Integrated Communications
Customers are currently billed on the 15th with net 15 terms.  October will be billed on the 15th with net 15 terms.

New Billing Cycle
Regardless of billing date, all October bills will be due by October 31st.
Beginning in November, all future billing will occur on the 10th with net 20 terms.

Internet Express Billing Cycles
Former Internet Express customers billed on the 1st
Customers will receive their regular invoice on November 1st for the November 15th - December 14th service period.  On November 10th, a prorated invoice for the December 15th – December 31st will be mailed.  Both invoices will be due by November 30th.

Former Internet Express customers billed on the 5th
Customers will not receive an invoice on November 5th.  An invoice on November 10th covering the service period from November 20th – December 31st will be mailed.  This invoice will be due on November 30.

Former Internet Express customers billed on the 15th
Customers will receive their regular monthly invoice on November 10th rather than the 15th.  This will cover the December 1st to December 31st service period and will be due on November 30th.

New Billing Cycle
Beginning in December, all Internet Express customers will have transitioned to a 10th of the month invoice with net 20 terms.

We apologize for any inconvenience these changes may cause to your accounts payable processes.  We have made efforts to minimize the impact on you as a customer, and hope that the transitions detailed above are clear and effective.  If you have any question regarding this change, please feel free to contact us at 515-471-1000 and ask for Accounts Receivable.  We appreciate your patience and understanding as we implement these changes.