On 5/3/05, Gerard Nicol <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Very few people in the commercial data security industry are interested in
> even posting to this list.

which would be their loss. I do know that many in the traditional
records storage industry do subscribe to this list for a number of
reasons.


> You can take advantage of my willingness to
> participate and explain an industry perspective or you can continue to nit
> pick.

not necessarily nitpicking but rather trying to seek out accurate
information. appreciate your participation.


> To answer your original question:
>
> Will we soon see the day when customers can track the movement of their
> computer tapes via the web?
>
> Yes, this is available now.

Great. now is this information being imparted to the customers?

>
> Will it stop tapes being lost by sloppiness. No.

don't remember saying that it would stop sloppiness, but rather I
believe I suggested that it could be used to reduce the incidents of
sloppiness by practicing some statistical analysis ala TQM. Iron
Mountain reported that 99.9% of 5 million trips were conducted
successfully. That translates to 500,000 trips being conducted
unsuccessfully. Is that an acceptable number? Now of course we don't
know what they mean by successful, all tapes delivered accurately,
none lost or that the truck hadn't broken down.

I would hope that they and other tape storage vendors are working
diligently to reach ever higher levels of accuracy and dependability
while providing a cost effective service to their customers.

But as you suggested in an earlier post it is a two way street. The
vendor is highly dependent upon the customer to make sure that parking
space is available, that the tapes are ready for pickup, etc.

The sad thing is that most if not all these tape transactions do not
involve the records management function, but only the IT groups.
Considering that records managers handle just as many if not more
transfers on a daily basis albeit hardcopy files and boxes you would
think that IT folks would call upon the RMs for their assistance.


--
Peter Kurilecz
Richmond, Va

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