Local Firms Provide Off-site Data Backups
Published 29.JUL.08

By George Nelson
When the 22,000-square-foot building in the Leetonia World Trade Park is finished later this year for B-Telecom Inc., it should have no shortage of work.

The building that will be a data storage site will also serve as the operations center for B-Telecom’s data centers elsewhere in the United States, reports Adam Zimmerman, vice president of marketing, a number projected to increase to eight over the next 18 months.

“Because of the number of data centers we’ll have to be monitoring, the importance of Leetonia has increased,” he says. Also increasing is the number of high-paying technology jobs the center will create as a result. Originally expected to be five out of a work force projected at 50, “that has certainly at least doubled to 10 and probably 20,” he reports.

That growth parallels the growth in the data storage industry, a change that has taken place over the past five to 10 years. Many businesses, especially larger companies, have shifted from copying critical data in-house to sending those data to off-site backups, and Zimmerman says the industry expects to have another 10 years of solid growth before it begins to level off.

“It’s incredibly expensive to run data centers, so it’s actually cheaper for corporations to outsource that data storage,” he explains, with many other businesses sharing the costs as opposed to companies trying to do it themselves.

“Also, people are running out of room to store data,” he continues. “It’s just one of those things that’s growing immensely; as we have less and less paper around the office, we have more and more bytes of data on our hard drives and we need more places to put that data.”

The cost of offsite backups varies, depending on the needs of a company, Zimmerman says, but clients typically are looking at $10 per gigabyte, although that can drop dramatically. “It’s easily much cheaper for us to buy a server and have that be your backup,” he explains. “Then you could fit terabytes of data and you’re not paying for anything but the space you’re renting and connectivity.”

According to Dave Wilkeson, chief operating officer of DRS LLC, Youngstown, nearly everyone needs to perform backups and store them off-site. “You’ve got to get your data out of your building one way or another,” he asserts, whether by physically removing backup tapes from the building every day or using an automated service such as DRS. It’s easy for a company’s building to burn down, he notes, an employee to steal the files, or the sprinkler to go off.

“It just comes down to how important your data is to your business,” Wilkeson says, “and in most businesses it’s pretty critical.”

Small or medium-sized companies can perform off-site backups at less cost than larger firms, he explains. Because of the massive amounts of data involved, larger businesses can’t back up by Internet; they require a different approach. “It’s a very costly, expensive thing for them to do,” he says, where a small business can back up its core data and other documents for about $25 per month. “It’s really inexpensive for them to do,” he says. “Compare that to business insurance. That’s not bad at all.” The automated off-site backup also provides additional security should a company’s server die.

About four months ago, DRS began offering what it describes as “a complete backup solution.” That involves installing a backup server for the client that DRS employees maintain, and data are also backed up at its off-site data centers. “That makes three copies of your data in three separate locations, and you don’t have to manage it at all,” Wilkeson says.

The advance of technology allowing greater backups over the Internet than before has meant a major change in the industry. Where 100 gigabytes used to be the “sweet spot” for such backups, Wilkeson says DRS is doing 1.5 terabytes and has the capacity to transfer greater amounts of data via the Internet. In addition, the company can move a client’s hard drives to one of its data centers to create a physical backup, then update changes daily over the Internet.

Another major change has been the larger data capacity of hard drives – some getting into one terabyte – making data backup services easier to offer at a lower cost to small businesses, says Dan Bennett, owner of DNR Technical Solutions, Boardman. “Everybody having high-speed Internet certainly has helped us out a lot,” he adds. It’s hard to find a business that doesn’t use it, “which wasn’t the case five years ago,” he remarks.

DNR markets its services primarily to small and medium-size businesses. Businesses need to consider off-site backups “if they have any data that they can’t lose – which basically in my experience is just about everybody,” he says.

Many people, Bennett says, simply are not aware of off-site backup. Pricing for the service varies, depending on how much data an individual has and how much information he wants to back up. “Lots of things, really,” he says.

“The moment you own a business you need to do backup, and the best way to do it is off-site,” remarks Bryan Blakeman, general manager of Valley Office Solutions, Boardman, which offers backup services through its FileMax division.

Most businesses don’t understand how to do a proper backup, and those who try to do it on their own don’t do it correctly, he says. Blakeman agrees that nearly all businesses need to back up their data. However, for most companies, that involves the owner taking home a tape or portable hard drive, which can be stolen or lost.

“Most large companies already understand,” he remarks. “It’s the small companies that don’t think about it and they’re the ones most at risk.”

A business owner has to consider the expense involved in replacing or reproducing lost information, for example, or the consequences if a competitor were to steal a backup tape. “With remote offsite backup that completely goes away. That’s a physical impossibility,” he says.

New software, wider bandwidth and better compression ratios have also improved companies’ abilities to do off-site backup. FileMax is handling more than one terabyte of data per day for a client, something that wouldn’t have been possible a year ago, he says.

Blakeman cites growth in FileMax’s data backup service as contributing in large part to Valley Office having its best year in 25 years. “Over the past three or four months, people are starting to call us knowing we’re doing off-site backup,” he says. “Instead of us having to educate people, they’re educated and out looking for it.”

Pricing for FileMax’s backup service starts at $99 per month for up to 10 gigabytes of storage. If clients balk at first, Blakeman notes that they are already spending in the neighborhood of $900 a year in computer tape if they are doing a proper backup themselves.

FileMax manages the service, sends confirmation messages and performs on-site service as often as needed. “If they’ve lost files, our technicians will go out and restore them at no extra charge,” he says.

Copyright 2008 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.

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Local Firms Provide Off-site Data Backups Published 29.JUL.08

Local Firms Provide Off-site Data Backups
Published 29.JUL.08