With more and more companies switching to electronic documents and storage, data backup and restoration is becoming more important than ever. Many large and medium-sized companies have their own, in-house backup and restoration services, but many smaller businesses do not have the resources for this. Many large firms will also outsource this to avoid having to manage this aspect and save on future equipment investments.
Fail-Safes
Many of these data storage companies will have a data center in Houston, Texas or other major cities as well as a second facility in a separate geographical location. This means that even if one site goes does from a natural disaster or area specific reason, then the second location can still provide the needed data. This will prevent data from being lost in the event of severe weather or other natural disasters.
Data Replication
A data management company should keep multiple copies of your documents to make sure that they are not going to be lost if a server fails. This is especially important when you consider that all hard drives will fail at some point. They may not fail while in service and often get retired before they do fail, but all will fail eventually. This means that data replication is vital to ensuring your data is safe.
Security
In the current world, climate data security is a very hot button topic. Many government officials believe the US government has the right to screen data stored on any US based company, no matter where the servers are located. This often means that they will request data from cloud storage providers and backup solution companies. There is also always the threat of a data breach. Finding out your company’s policies around security and data ownership are vital when searching for a data storage company.
Policies will vary by company, but look for a company the specifies that you maintain full ownership of your data. Some companies will also encrypt your data so that only you can access it, not them. This will prevent them from being able to fulfill data requests.
