New Services Boost Disaster Recovery

Two of the largest disaster recovery companies, Iron Mountain Inc. and Schlumberger Ltd., are enhancing their services in response to storage management trends and the threat of terrorism.

Iron Mountain will announce this week its new PC Electronic Vaulting service, which backs up desktop and laptop computers left out of normal network and server backup processes and recovers data through a browser interface. The product is rebranded from Connected Corp.s Total Lifecycle Management 6.2 software. Pricing starts at $15 per node per month.

“A lot of folks have realized theres a lot of information in their remote offices, their home offices, their desktops and laptops thats not being protected,” said Harry Ebbighausen, president of Iron Mountains Offsite Data Protection division, in Boston.

After an initial full backup, the service captures only changes each night.

Experio Solutions Corp., a Dallas consulting subsidiary of Tokyos Hitachi Ltd., runs Connecteds software on 850 consultant and employee laptops. Michael Shisko, director of IT, said he first used Connecteds software four years ago on 3,200 nodes of Experios former parent, Chicago-based Grant Thornton LLP. To save server space, the company was encouraging users to save data on laptops.

“We couldnt ask users to store more locally if we couldnt find a way to get it backed up. A server-based solution didnt make a lot of sense,” Shisko said. “Weve been very pleased. Weve never experienced a slowdown that we could attribute to their service.”

Customers concerned about larger IT and logistics disasters can get help from Schlumbergers SchlumbergerSema division, in New York. The companys Global Recovery Solutions, renamed DeXa.Ensure and to be announced this week, now includes storage replication, wide-area networking and security, said Ron Mobed, director of business development.

“Weve taken advantage of the storage mirroring, backup and restore capabilities that have been available in the data center hosting part of our business,” Mobed said.

SchlumbergerSemas facilities include products from EMC Corp., Hitachi, IBM, Network Appliance Inc., Storage Technology Corp. and Veritas Software Corp., among others, Mobed said.

In the next few weeks, the company will launch another element, Crisis Management, in Europe and will bring it to the United States later this year, Mobed said. Through secure command centers, that service has dual roles. It automates customer transitions from disaster locations to Schlumbergers facilities, and it manages employee and partner notifications, “so they dont have to do it from a hotel room and cell phones,” Mobed said. All the services can be priced in dedicated or shared models, he said.