Island Networks Limited INL, introduced the service to the corporate community on the final day of the Central Information Technology Office's (CITO) regional summit on Disaster Preparedness and Recovery, at the Jamaica Pegasus in Kingston.  INL is a major sponsor of the summit.

Drconnect, which is targeted to the corporate customer, facilitates total network redundancy and disaster recovery.  This means that a customer using the service will not experience interruptions to their existing data network during or immediately after a disaster, as there is automatic network switchover over to Island Network's Drconnect.

Island Networks also announced plans to incorporate a location for clients to place equipment, which can mirror their existing data network operation center.  In the event that a failure occurs at the customer's network operations centre, this site would allow normal operations to continue unabated by the disaster.

Island Networks CEO, Andrew Massias, pointed out that Drconnect is a service focused on multi-location businesses and also small to medium sized businesses with disaster recovery needs.  "For multi-location companies, the solution offers a number of different intrinsic values -- such as a complete automatic seamless fail over system that in the event of a disaster, can switch from their present communication network to Island Networks' without them even noticing an interaction, having continued access to the "real time" data information needed to run their operations, Internet access, being able to use email, calling remote offices and international calling.  It is the only real total disaster communication solution for the corporate customer with multiple locations.  We also carry their data or voice to their disaster site as another part of the disaster recovery service," Mr. Massias said.

A number of Jamaica's top financial institutions including National Commercial Bank (NCB), Jamaica Money Market Brokers (JMMB) and Victoria Mutual Building Society (VMBS) are already using Drconnect in combination with the Branchconnect® service from INL.  Ricardo Ebanks, former assistant manager for electronic data processing with Victoria Mutual Building Society (VMBS), found the Drconnect service very effective.  "We took four data links from Island Networks that we actually use as communication links", he explained.  "These backup communications links allow us to design our network so that if our primary communication link fails, the network infrastructure automatically identifies that the primary link has failed and switches over in a matter of seconds to the alternate provider which in this case is Island Networks.

Mr. Ebanks explains that this results in very little or no downtime for remote sites, which enables the company to deliver real time response to customer queries even if their network is down.

Mr. Ebanks also highlighted the quality of technical support provided by INL.  "I have interacted with the local technical support team and they were able to go into detail about technical problems when they came up … and they work through them with you.  Once implemented, the service just worked, we really didn't have to talk back to them anymore" he said.

Drconnect was designed to work with CISCO systems technology and a newly developed platform, Multiple Protocol Label Switching - MPLS, which manages the different levels of traffic such as voice, video and data, more efficiently than traditional networks.  Island Networks holds the distinction of being the first company to deploy an MPLS platform throughout the region.

Established in March 2004, INL is currently serving the entire island and just last year, began operations in Puerto Rico.  Plans are afoot for expansion into Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago by the end of this year.