With the bulk of business information being stored in some sort of digital format, it’s difficult to keep up with the latest hardware to do the job right.
How do you decide between tapes, CDs, floppy disks or Zip disks? Which is best and what lasts longer?
An easier solution may be to use an online storage facility. For a fee, you upload your data to the site, where it can be accessed by you and anyone else you authorize. You don’t have to worry about the hardware becoming obsolete, and everything is in one place — no more shuffling through multiple backup tapes to find a file.
Let’s say a major client leaves, but comes back in seven years. You still have the data, but will it be on a medium you can still read? If this had happened now, you would probably be looking at a box of 5 1/2 inch floppy disks. Do you have anything that could read that data? By using a Web-based solution, all you need is a browser to access your information.
Before you decide that what you have will be plenty for years to come, consider the following from Forrester Research:
- Firms interviewed saw 52 percent storage growth, driven by e-commerce efforts, new applications and data warehousing.
- Storage spending will rise from 4 percent today to 17 percent of computing system budgets in 2003.
- Companies should contain storage spending by focusing on customer data and outsourcing other fuctions.
While many solutions are designed for the collossal data banks created by Fortune 500 firms, there are some aimed at the smaller enterprise. DocSpace (www.docspace.com) is one example. The first 25 MB of space are free, with prices increasing to $24.99 per user per month for 101 MB to 250 MB, plus $1 for each additional 5 MB over that.
Files are secure, and the site can be used as the meeting point for people collaborating on a project. The document stays on the server while changes are made and saved. Ideas and thoughts can be shared through a threaded discussion feature. Files are organized on the virtual drive in the same format as your PC.
The storage shortage will only get worse. More data than ever before is being gathered about customers, vendors and competitors. This data, to be useful, needs to be kept in an organized manner that will be accessible not only today, but also five years from now.
Todd Shryock ([email protected]) is SBN’s special reports editor.
