For some, I don’t think it matters. One only needs to look to Facebook acquiring Instagram yesterday for a cool billion – yes, billion – in cash and stock, to know there is still a lot of money being spent. But as the IRS tax deadline looms and companies are releasing their first quarter earnings for 2012, I am reminded that most of us would welcome ideas – big or small – for cost savings in both our personal and professional lives. In fact, one tweet on Monday summed it up well:

“Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion & didn’t notice the expense. You bought a latte for $3 & held your breath as they swiped your card.”

So my focus today is how businesses can save on capital expenses and overhead costs by maintaining their technological systems more efficiently. An outsourced solution is making more and more “cents” to companies as fiscally-responsible organizations are embracing the potential offered by various IT services, including the cloud. Cloud computing, software delivery platforms and other cloud hosting programs have emerged as wildly popular enterprise IT models, according to a recent article. And there’s more:

• Businesses need to prioritize data center efficiency, report says
• Domestic server room closet abuse
• IT outsourcing preferences vary from region to region
• Companies expand IT outsourcing functions
• 12 IT Outsourcing Predictions for 2012

So next time you are “tightening your belt” or “pinching pennies,” consider the many IT Infrastructure options available to help you run your business more cost-effectively. Have you come across an interesting article about this topic? Please feel free to share!

In part one I wrote about Formula 1’s DRS, the Drag Reduction System, and how teams and drivers utilize this technology to gain an advantage over the competition. In part two, I’ll write about another technological tool that F1 teams have at their disposal when competing: KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System).

KERS is a system to recover the kinetic energy that is present in waste heat created by the car’s braking process. It stores that energy and converts it into power that can be called upon by the driver to boost acceleration. The system, regulated by F1 rules, captures approximately 80 bhp (brake horsepower) that can be used by the driver via a boost button on the steering wheel for approximately 6.5 to 6.7 seconds per lap at specific locations. The braking action is always recharging the system during the lap, but it can never release more than the allotted 80 bhp. However, once the allotted energy is used up, the car has to pass the start/finish line again before the system is re-armed and available to the driver. It is optional equipment on the cars. The key points of the system are that it can be used both offensively and defensively. Offensively, it can be used to try and overtake a car ahead and defensively, it can be used to try and prevent the car behind from overtaking. KERS is a valuable tool and the tactics involved can give the driver a distinct advantage during the race. Every team wants to win and utilizing all of the tools at their disposal is paramount to winning the race.

Just like F1 drivers have access to advanced technologies like DRS and KERS, Internap customers have access to a toolkit of performance technologies themselves. These include our Performance IP™ service with our built-in Managed Internet Route Optimizer™ technology (MIRO), Accelerated IP, or XIP™, plus a robust Content Delivery Network with 100% uptime – just to name a few.

Need access to a toolkit that leaves the rest in the dust? Check out our performance video for an overview.

Image Credit: Sahara Force India Formula One Team

I’ve been a Formula 1 fan for years, attending my first F1 event in 1986 at the inaugural Hungarian Grand Prix. The small trek from the buses to the track was worth it when I was able to sit on the hillside and see, hear, and almost as importantly, feel the cars as they passed by below me. You can feel the power from the engines as it resonates inside your chest, hear the whine of the cars as they move away from you and smell the fumes and rubber after they’ve gone. It was a very visceral experience I’ll never forget.

Technology has come a long way with today’s cars utilizing things never dreamed of then. One of the technological advances is DRS, or the Drag Reduction System. Essentially, the system allows a driver to utilize downforce (drag) when it is needed in the corners and then remove downforce to obtain the highest speed possible on the straights. These movable rear wing elements are controlled electronically by the driver after a certain number of laps (determined by race control) and are activated when the car is within one second of the car ahead, which has to occur at a specific location on the track (the arming zone). Once armed, the driver waits for the opportunity to initiate the DRS on the following straight. This reduction in downforce effectively gives the driver/car approximately 10-12 km/h (5-6 mph) of extra speed down the straight, which may or may not be enough to complete a pass. The system is deactivated when the driver uses the brakes. The key point of the system is to gain a competitive advantage, even if temporarily. Every team wants to win and utilizing all of the tools at their disposal is paramount to winning the race.

It is the same in business. Every business wants to win, to gain customers and maintain that competitive edge. For our customers, utilizing all of the business tools at their disposal includes taking advantage of Internap’s Accelerated IP, or XIP™. XIP can improve enterprise web services and applications that rely on the TCP layer by up to 4x. It keeps your end user coming back, knowing that their order will be processed fast, having pages that load much more quickly and seeing fresh content at the speed of a click.

Image Credit: Sahara Force India Formula One Team

First, many thanks to my fellow colleague, Kristen Izzo, for keeping the weekly mashup going while I’ve been in Italy the past two weeks. Fine job Kristen!

Speaking of my trip to Italy, on our last day there we made our way down the narrow streets (I’m talking 1 and ½ cars wide, if that, for TWO LANES OF TRAFFIC) of the Amalfi Coast and then across the packed freeway to Rome, where Mamma Mia, we really experienced some “hair-raising” driving. Nonetheless, we made it to our destination — the airport — for our 11 hour plane ride home.

Whether we were on the cliff roads of Capri, the tiny streets of Sorrento, or the patchwork paths of Positano, it mattered not. Little motor scooters zipped by this way and that. Folks on bicycles navigated the treacherous cobblestoned roads. People on foot zigged and zagged to avoid others. Tiny toy cars (well, they looked like toy cars) performed a ballet of sorts to accommodate the dozens of oversized tour buses showing off the sites of Italy…seriously, there were times when the little cars would reverse on the road until it would allow for both the bus and the car to pass simultaneously. It was crazy. And yet it worked. Not once did we see a fender bender, nor an accident of any kind. (Wait, I take that back. One person in our group fell to the ground when she was looking up rather than where she was walking. But, thankfully, she was fine.)

My point?

Fellow Italians have figured out how to keep the traffic moving and it may look disorganized, but it works, much like we’ve figured out how to optimize the traffic on the Internet. Why am I bringing this up? Because Internet traffic is increasing every day and business needs to be ready for the next big thing that might impact their content and data delivery.

Here is some of what is being said in the media about the growing numbers on the Internet:

• Guest column: Sizing the Internet economy in emerging countries
• Videos boost UK online advertising
• What is Brazil’s Most Promising Sector?
• The High Costs of the Cloud
• Sites Becoming Socially Successful

For more information on how to put a roadmap in place for your growing traffic bursts or scaling your infrastructure when your business needs it, read our Beyond Nines case study to see how they increased speed, reliability, security and scale with our colocation and IP connectivity solutions.

A customer recently tweeted asking us, “What is SOC 2 and what makes it better?”

SOC 2 in 140 characters:

SOC 2 assures clients we use systems to protect their data. It audits security, availability, process integrity, privacy and confidentiality.

[Tweet “SOC 2 assures clients we use systems to protect their data. It audits security, availability, process integrity, privacy and confidentiality.”]

The longer version:

SAS70 was designed to audit controls whereas SSAE was designed to attest to the validity of systems fitness for a particular purpose. The differences are more obvious at the associated SSAE SOC level. SOC 1 is primarily designed to review financial reporting systems. SSAE SOC 2 covers operational control systems following a predefined Trust Services Principles and Criteria around security, availability, process integrity, privacy and confidentiality. SOC 3 documents relate to whether service organizations systems met the SOC 2 criteria but do not describe the tests or results achieved.

Our SSAE SOC 2 reporting assures our customers that we have adequate control systems in place to safeguard their data and information.

For more information on the transition, plus how this reporting strengthens our managed services, visit our auditing standards page.

It’s been a pretty exciting weekend so far here at Internap. IT IQ has taken on a whole new meaning.

As you may have heard, at around 1:30 AM local time, Internap’s original Seattle P-NAP® (SEA for all you Internap insiders), gained consciousness. While our Managed Internet Route Optimizer™ technology (MIRO) has always been referred to as the routing intelligence behind our IP services, previously we had always regarded this as a way to market our route optimized Performance IP™.  It was never suspected that the algorithms and silicon based processing power would ever become self-aware. At 1:30 AM, however, MIRO broadcast “Hello World” to our NOC. At approximately, 2:45 AM local time, our Silicon Valley P-NAP (SJE) responded “Hello World.”  In both cases, no impact to customers was detected.

While it’s pretty incredible, most of the Internap team that works with the P-NAP and MIRO haven’t appeared all that surprised. MIRO is Internap’s patented route management software. It is designed to constantly probe tens of thousands of Internet destinations, and based on data collected with each of those probes, make decisions about how Internap customers’ Internet traffic can reach that location with the least latency, packet loss and jitter. In any one P-NAP location, by connecting to up to 11 different Internet backbones, MIRO will make 340,000 route changes in a 24-hour period. Typically, the P-NAP offers our customers a faster connection (on average 25-30 milliseconds faster), faster page loads (1.25 second faster) and a more stable connection (3x less likely to experience an outage). Earlier today though, it did something else − it became self-aware.

Intenap’s engineers have long speculated that the SEA and SJE P-NAPs would be the most likely to achieve self awareness due to the length of time that MIRO has been in continuous operation and the amount of traffic being processed on a daily basis. By taking in hundreds of thousands of data points, recognizing patterns and making logical connections, MIRO’s programming creates the perfect scenario for computerized self-awareness. It is believed that the constant probing of end destinations on the Internet may have created a cumulative knowledge that initially allowed MIRO to guess the outcome of a probe before the probe returned the information.

Learn more about MIRO and Internap’s Enterprise IP solutions.