Fourteen years after its founding, The Nexus Group stands today as Tennessee's oldest and largest independent Internet service provider. The company currently serves over 3,500 businesses and institutions across the state of Tennessee. Our residential division, Nexus Networks, currently serves approximately 5,500 customers across all grand divisions of the state. We can provide service in every metropolitan area and all but 9 counties of the state.
The history of The Nexus Group extends back to before the Internet existed as we know it today, and the company was known as ISDN-Net. It was founded shortly after Jerry Dunlap and Ken Russell met while serving together on Project FYI Tennessee in 1992. It is the work of this committee that prepared Tennessee for the Internet. It was because this committee's recommendations were implemented that Tennessee was able to have the most advanced communications infrastructures in the nation at the start of the Internet revolution.
"A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be."
-Wayne Gretzky
Professional Hockey Hall of Fame
From their service on Project FYI Tennessee, Dunlap and Russell, to use Gretzky's words, began their knack for seeing where the puck was going to be in the IT game. That the Internet would have an enormous impact for commercial and intuitional applications, and they invested $500 each and started the company in a spare room. And soon after the company began operations in 1994, the Internet did become open for commercial applications. The Nexus Group signed up the first commercial user in Tennessee--appropriately a customer from the music industry. The company assisted it's customers in web site design and enabled them to take advantage of e-commerce opportunities.
Commercial Internet use caught on fast and very quickly became something that no serious enterprise could do without. Big changes happened as fast as a puck can move across the rink. The Nexus Group was the first ISP to start its own carrier neutral data center, called the Nashville Regional Exchange Point, also known as NREP. As technology grew and business demanded even greater speeds, The Nexus Group has continued to skate to where the puck is going by developing new service and connectivity offerings. Businesses quickly grew out of traditional dial-up and ISDN connections, but The Nexus Group was already offering connectivity over DSL, T1, DS3, OC3, OC12, wireless and even satellite. In 2003, The Nexus Group was the first company in Tennessee to offer Voice over IP service to its customers which allowed them to run more efficiently by leveraging existing bandwidth for their voice communications.
As The Nexus Group saw businesses becoming more concerned about data security, appropriate use and network abuse issues, the company introduced service offerings for firewall and network security. It also offers arguably the best content filtering and spam filtering services available that increase productivity, help protect customers from potential HR issues involving the Internet and saves its customer's time and resources.
From the outset, The Nexus Group knew that an extensive, robust and reliable network would hold the key to growth and success. They have worked diligently over time to build the best network possible. What started out as a network linking a few schools, universities and a hospital has become a state of the art data centers located in Nashville, Knoxville and Memphis with POPs in 90% of Tennessee's 95 counties. Each data center has multiple connections to the Internet backbone, and a number of major telecom carriers peer together at these locations. These centers also feature redundant power supplies and other security features that one would expect to find at a state of the art facility. The customer benefits by faster routing with fewer network hops to get data to its destination. Our customers, with offices across Tennessee, also feel more secure knowing that their interoffice data never leaves our network.
The part of the our story that sets The Nexus Group apart from virtually every other ISP is demonstrated long-term profit based growth. Most companies only concern was about growing a customer base without regard for profit or loss on the company's balance sheet. The result was usually that telecom or internet company filing for bankruptcy protection or going out of business completely as the result of a business model that simply could not work long term either because of debt, artificially low pricing or a combination of the two.
The Nexus Group's value proposition has always been that the best way to offer true stability and reliability is to grow by investing profit back into the company. The philosophy has not only worked but has allowed the company to grow at more than 100% a year for the past four years. The company has also posted double digit profits during the period. And the company is debt free, which anyone knowledgeable in the industry would agree is unheard of in today's communications business environment. Business savvy customers appreciate the fact that they do not have to worry about whether or not their data and telecom carrier will be in business next year, or even next quarter.
The senior leadership at The Nexus Group has known for many years that the only true constant in this industry is change, and in 2008 the company began it's most ambitious change initiative yet, code named "The Nexus Project" with the goal of once again answering the question of "where is the puck going next?"
The short answer in three words: Confidentiality- Integrity- Availability. Companies are more than ever dependent on their data services to do business, so they must be secure, reliable and available all the time no matter the situation. Achieving these objectives meant developing new service offerings such as virtual server platforms, high availability bandwidth, advanced security measures and expert project management giving customers a complete picture of risk assessment and gap analysis. Those things also require more space, so The Nexus Group acquired a 20,000 square foot facility for use as a data center, disaster recovery suites and meeting hall.
Our customers are those who depend heavily on their IT services to do business. Customers who sign up with us want the strength of a company that can do it all--who want action, not excuses or finger pointing when something is not right. We offer the professional services of a project manager and an engineer to make sure your move into our data center goes without a hitch and to make sure your needs are accommodated. In short when The Nexus Group handles the IT infrastructure of your organization, you are setup for success!
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