Have you ever looked at the amount of paperwork and documents in your office and wondered how you will ever manage to store everything within the confines of your office premises? Here is some information on protecting and storing your data, which may prompt you to consider this practice management issue before your stacks of documents grow to greater heights!
Whether you work in a law firm, a hospital, a finance house or an automobile association, data is the lifeblood of your organisation. These days, most companies use computers to store critical information such as client lists, payoff and benefits, accounts payable and accounts receivable. If that information is stored in hard copy, thousands of square feet will have to be dedicated to filing cabinets and paper storage. As the amount of stored data increases exponentially, so do the logistical problems facing the company.
'Document storage or archiving has been around for many decades but, sadly, most companies do not foresee the importance for such a significant operation in their business,' remarked Jeron Ng at OCS Data and Records Management Services. 'Imagine the panic one gets when one needs to find an urgent document in a "document jungle" with piles and layers of files and boxes all over the place.' This not only provides a 'first-class free buffet for pests', but also leads to wasted time and money in hunting for documents.
As Jason Tay at Canon added, the benefits of proper records management go way beyond mere peace of mind. Developments in records management technology has meant that files can be barcoded for even faster retrieval. Additionally, handwritten documents can be archived using imaging technology, and the whole system can be Web-enabled 'so that records can be shared securely over the Internet even when staff are overseas.'
The type of technology used in archiving documents will depend largely on customers' needs and requirements. Peter Cave at Keppel Logistics' Document Management Services (KDMS) shared, 'A professional document management service provider must start off by first assessing the clients' needs and then professionally guide the client towards what it is most suited to their information management, legal and security requirements.'
Loss of Data
It is frightening but true that data can be wiped out easily by natural disaster, fire and crimes such as theft and sabotage, hardware and software malfunction or by human error. Hardware failures, software failures and human error are the top three causes of such data loss. In studies, it has been found that over 50% of all data loss can be attributed to hardware or software malfunction and over 30% attributed to human intervention.
Whatever causes the loss of data, it costs money to recreate the data. This expense can be measured by the cost of labour, equipment and other resources, and downtime while the data is being recreated. A common estimate for the recreation of such data is US$3,000 per megabyte (3M, 1995). For example, it would cost a company that has 4,000 gigabytes of data, US$1.2billion to recreate the lost data.
Interestingly, while an increasing number of companies are aware of the need to backup their files, few seem to recognise the importance of storing that data somewhere safe.
'For instance,' said CISCO Recall, 'many companies store their backup tapes on-site in the company's safe thinking that the tapes would be protected from theft and fire. Unfortunately, even though the company's safe may survive a fire, the data would probably be lost due to the fire's intense heat.'
Mediums of Document Storage
To choose the best medium of document storage, one would have to study the document's life cycle as well as the distinctive strengths of each method. A document's life cycle is divided into two stages: active and inactive.
For the active stage of a document's life cycle, electronic formats provide excellent retrieval functionality but are poorly suited to retention of information for long periods of time. This is due to the limited stability of computer storage media and the dependence on processing applications of specific hardware and software.
Microfilm/tape, however, is well suited for long-term storage. Microfilms can be easily viewed or scanned into an electronic format, giving the benefits of long-term retention and quick access.
Hard copies can be very efficient, if correct filing and indexing are carried out in the initial stages. Some storage companies have web-enabled their services for customers to organise and manage their documents inventory on-line. With this facility, customers can locate cartons containing documents relating to account, client name and invoice number. Additionally, some web-enabled services allow customers to instruct the service provider on-line to collect, retrieve or destroy the hard copies of documents.
Perhaps, the most common medium for document storage thus far has been microfilms/tape storage. Tape storage is cost-efficient and unlimited in its capacity. It has been used by corporations worldwide for over a decade and, as such, has earned itself a trusted place worldwide.
Choosing a Tape Solution
How do you choose a backup system? You should clearly have in mind what you want to achieve before considering which would be most appropriate for you. There are three main factors: capacity, performance and cost of ownership.
Capacity
This refers to the amount of data that can be stored on a single tape. The more capacity on one tape, the less tapes required per backup and the less need for new tapes to be inserted during a backup. A rule of thumb is that the less human intervention required during the backup, the less costly the backup process becomes.
Performance
Performance refers to the speed with which data is transferred across an electrical connection, such as an SCSI bus. Every aspect of a computer system affects the overall performance. The transfer rate of a complete system is only as fast as the slowest component in the system. Aspects which can affect system performance include the computer's microprocessor, SCSI adapter, network card and cabling, the type of data being stored, the type of data compression used, the type of application software, the amount of traffic on the system and the overall system configuration. In some instances, performance is adversely affected by outdated devices and a system upgrade is necessary.
Cost of ownership
Cost takes into account the purchase price of the tape product, purchase price of tapes and number of tapes required per backup, the cost of equipment required, the interface with the tape drive and other system components, scheduled and unscheduled maintenance and repairs, the amount of human intervention required to perform a backup and the amount of time required to perform a backup.
While the purchase price of the tape drive and interface equipment are one-time costs, the others are periodic costs incurred whenever a backup is performed or whenever a system component fails. If backups must be kept for a very long time (in some cases, years), new tapes must be purchased for each backup. To minimise this cost, one should always choose a tape drive that can write very high capacities to tape.
While backup is performed, the system is unavailable, or at least is not as responsive as usual, meaning that employees cannot get work done or will have to work at a slower pace. One suggestion is to choose a distributed form of backup so that different servers or workstations are backed up independently by different backup devices.
Another important factor that affects cost of ownership is reliability of the backup hardware and cost of preventative maintenance and repair. All hardware products have reliability specifications associated with them, as defined by the manufacturer, but not all manufacturers use the same criteria in their reliability measurements.
If you are concerned about reliability, you need to be aware about which components are included in the reliability specification so that you can make an accurate comparison.
Reliability
Tape drive reliability is usually specified in terms of mean time between failures or MTBF. MTBF is the average time a backup device will run before a failure occurs. MTBF figures are usually quoted at a rated duty cycle, or the percentage of time that the unit will be in use.
For example, a rating of 200,000 hours MTBF at a 10% duty cycle means that if the device is used 10% of the time (2.4 hours per day), it should last for 200,000 hours (23 years) before needing repair or replacement. MTBF figures are helpful for comparing products, but they are estimates calculated by the manufacturer based on the estimated reliability of the components used.
Whatever choice you make in the backup, storage and retrieval of your important data, the message is that the options are manifold, but caution is necessary. Out of sight should not mean out of mind and storage is not simply a case of keeping something off-site.
[Editorial Note: This is an edited version of an article first published in Straits Lawyer, Volume 2:8.]