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September 14, 2005

Physical Disaster Without Data Disaster?

Nobody thinks a disaster is in their future. In fact, most companies think they are immune from disasters. After all, very few companies are making proper backups. Of course, a backup is no good if the medium can not be accessed or the data becomes irrelevant before being recovered. What's the solution? Simple! Proper off site document/information management.

With a good document management system in place, documents (read: data) can be held in a safe off site location. The majority of colocation companies today have many safeguards in case emergency situations arise. I recently took a tour of a colocation facility which housed servers controlling content for many different companies. Not only could the location promise no downtime in the event of a hurricane, they also had safeguards in case of earthquake, fire, long term power outage, heat wave, looting, etc.. They also, of course, had video cameras everywhere, a multilevel physical access system along with locked cabinets in server cages for security. Picture having your information managed off-site knowing they had that kind of protection! With the document management piece running on the server you can be assured your documents can be searched, retrieved, and worked on in a timely, cost sensitive manner.

With a server in place with a protected colocation service as well as having a good document management solution in place your company can continue or resume working prior to the disaster. If a disaster were to hit tomorrow and your business was destroyed, could you resume business in another location tomorrow? How long could you afford to be closed?

Posted by on September 14, 2005 09:52 AM

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