In early 1994, California businessman Bob Lorsch was in a difficult position. A 6.7 magnitude earthquake had rendered the high rise that housed his public relations and marketing firm inaccessible, and his business' data was not backed up at another location. In the months following the disaster, Lorsch was miraculously able to recover his business, but he did not forget why it almost floundered: not having its data stored offsite on reliable hardware, such as an IBM iSeries server.
Transforming his misfortune into opportunity, Lorsch formed what is today one of the best-known offsite data storage services: MyMedicalRecords.com.
It Could Happen to Any Business
What happened to Lorsch's business could happen to any business, any day of the week, and it would not take an earthquake to make it happen. Something as dire as a server failure could send the data of a company down the proverbial drain, and unable to ever be retrieved.
According to research, over fifty percent of companies that suffer a major data loss are not in business two years later, and when a company is small, its chances of going belly-up in the wake of a data loss increase by nearly twenty percent. Thanks to the innovative thinking of Lorsch and other entrepreneurs like him, businesses do not have to face these statistics.
Instead, they can store their data offsite securely and affordably by contracting with a managed IT support provider that offers offsite data storage, preferably one that uses reliable hardware such as an IBM iSeries server.
Hardware Quality Matters
The value of offsite data storage is defined by the hardware that facilitates it. Today, servers in IBM's iSeries offer some of the best midrange storage support in the hardware industry. Now a part of IBM's Power Systems line, the servers deliver the following advantages to businesses that need redundant data:
Multiple file system support
Balances process and memory resources automatically
Built-in, resilient cluster architecture
Excellent virus resistance and data encryption
Integrated storage management
Without these benefits, data is not protected as well as it should be. In addition to investigating an IT provider as a business, companies should also investigate the quality of its hardware before they sign a service contract.
Does Your Business Need Offsite Data Storage?
If so, choosing a managed IT support provider that uses the IBM iSeries server is an excellent option, but the key is to find a provider soon. Data loss can happen in an instant, and recovering from it could take months or years, if a business recovers at all.
In the past, offsite data storage involved multiple expenses: hardware purchase, software purchase, system installation, and system maintenance. Today, providers of managed data storage eliminate these costs, replacing them with a monthly service fee that makes offsite data storage affordable on almost any IT budget. Considering the value of data security, the cost of managed data storage is a small price to pay, and more businesses than ever are electing to pay it.