“If we get cut in one direction, we can use the loop and go the other route. It’s been great for us. And like I said, I don’t know how we got along without it.”

Archway (formerly Corporate Services)

South Bend-based Corporate Services, a fulfillment marketing company, has been in business for over 14 years. And since December of 2006, it has been using Metronet’s high-speed, dark fiber to ship data from its main site to a downtown data center 11 miles away. “Sometimes, I don’t know how we functioned without Metronet,” says Mike Sniadecki, the company’s network services director.

“The performance has been awesome. “Granted, we didn’t have Metronet [ChoiceLight] for many years, but it’s amazing what Metronet [ChoiceLight] did for us. Our co-location site is 11 miles away, but the speed and reliability of the Metronet [ChoiceLight] makes it seem like all our systems are in the same room. Sniadecki said Metronet permits Corporate Services to operate and manage its systems “without being bandwidth-constrained by the limits a lesser circuit type would impose.

It also allows us to have much more flexibility in how we design our systems. We are no longer physically constrained to one location. “It assists both our users and clients by simultaneously allowing users a delay free management of company systems and a capable disaster recovery (DR) solution for clients to operate all on the same circuit. “The Metronet [ChoiceLight] has given us the ability to expand our DR systems. It has also allowed us to utilize our co-locations 99 percent ‘uptime’ and pass that along to our clients for their databases and websites.”

Sniadecki says Corporate Services signed up with ChoiceLight nearly three years ago to link up its four main buildings to two that were about 1.5 miles away and to reach the co-location site that it uses for backup and disaster recovery. In addition, the company bases some of its customers’ websites at the downtown co-location site so they can have “99 percent up time.” Most of Corporate Services’ clients, he says, are on the East and West Coasts.

“Before subscribing, we had a private T1 line and over time it was just too slow for us,” he says. “We wanted more speed, and Metronet [ChoiceLight] is 10 times as fast, and we also wanted the dark fiber. So, we put new equipment on both ends, and the monthly costs have been very reasonable.” Sniadecki says he also likes the redundancy that is built into the looped, ChoiceLight system.