To Our Valued Clients:
Each quarter I like to share with our clients the major initiatives we’re undertaking at Online Tech, and a look at what is in store for the near future.
Last year, we grew over 26%, added a new data center, and invested in a number of improvements to our data centers and service offerings. Some of our 2011 initiatives included:
- A $1M investment in our Mid-Michigan data center, including the complete replacement of the Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS). The in-line UPS retrofit was achieved with no downtime and increased the capacity to a full 1 MW at the data center floor.
- We remodeled the office and entry areas of the Mid-Michigan data center and now have a kitchen area and conference rooms available for our clients’ use.
- We opened a third data center, Ann Arbor 2, in the same Avis office park as our Ann Arbor 1 data center was filling up. The new data center went live in November and adds another 10,000 square feet of raised floor and 300 KW of capacity to our footprint.
- We completed our first SSAE 16 Type II (SOC 1), SOC 2, SOC 3 and HIPAA audits and reports last year. Online Tech was the first data center operator in Michigan to complete its SSAE 16 Type II (SOC 1) audit. We are one of a handful of data centers nationally who invested in a SOC 2 and SOC 3 audit which is much more stringent and focuses on privacy and security controls. We are also one of very few data centers across the country found to be fully HIPAA compliant across all 54 citations of the HITECH act. Online Tech shares audit reports with clients under NDA – every hosting provider should. You can learn more about the latest set of data center audits from this blog post.
- Our new multi-tenant managed cloud computing offering was released last year. Rather than competing against low-end public clouds like Amazon and Rackspace, we designed our managed cloud offering to run mission critical applications. The uptake of server deployments has ramped very quickly since the product release and allows clients to leverage the flexibility and scalability of the cloud.
- HIPAA compliant cloud – through the design and audit process, both our multi-tenant managed cloud and private cloud offerings are HIPAA audited and 100% compliant.
- DR Now! – Last quarter, we introduced the first cost-effective disaster recovery solution for cloud computing. Our managed and private cloud clients are able to get complete disaster recovery in a second data center with a 4 hour recovery time, starting at $99 per server. Fast, automatic disaster recovery is one of the demonstrated benefits of deploying cloud computing.
It was nice to see so many of you at our Ann Arbor 2 open house last month. Over the holidays, we were able to take a deep breath and start planning for what we hope will be an exciting 2012. Some of the plans on our first quarter horizon include:
- Rolling out a new website. Along with a cleaner, easier-to-navigate site, we’ve added a number of resources to the new site that you might find helpful, including information on HIPAA compliance, PCI compliance and SOX compliance.
- We are completing our PCI (Processing Card Industry) audit and will be listed on the Visa’s Global Registry of Service Providers. PCI compliance is required for companies that process, transmit or store credit card data across the Internet.
- We are announcing additional fiber optic capability in our Mid-Michigan data center that enhances the connectivity to the Ann Arbor data centers and adds direct fiber connections to additional Internet service providers.
- Comcast has just finished installing a fiber connection into the Mid-Michigan data center – to provide cost-effective high-speed data connections from anywhere in Michigan to our data centers.
- Finally, if you’re going to be at the February HIMSS health care IT conference in Las Vegas, please stop by – we’ll be in booth #13528, where we’ll be discussing our HIPAA audited hosting capabilities. Our HIPAA auditor and one of the foremost legal experts in HIPAA compliance and the HITECH Act will be at our booth to answer your HIPAA questions.
We wish all of our clients continued success into the new year and we look forward to continuing to serve your hosting needs. As always, I welcome your feedback on how we can improve our services and the value we deliver. Feel free to drop me an e-mail or call anytime.
Best Regards,
Mike Klein
President & Chief Operating Officer
Online Tech Inc.
