I was at a recent Information Security Conference and a woman came up  
to me and said "Oh you're that guy that is negative to the offsite  
storage industry."  I was sort of surprised.    Later in the  
conference another offsite provider stated that they found my remarks  
helpful to identifying market segment to pursue.  They found  
targeting those responsive to secure storage to be effective in  
garnering new clients. The LA police motto of "Serve and Protect" is  
an excellent model for the offsite storage, information destruction,  
media storage and offsite back up industry.

These comments coming so close together created a dichotomy that  
might have seemed odd at another time, but I was at NAID, and they  
have developed a high level certification program.  It established  
benchmarks and those failing an audit are no longer worthy of a  
Certification.  What makes it especially rigorous is that each and  
every site of a company must pass their audit to maintain the  
Certification. Talk about pressure to perform. (Wait is this starting  
to sound like a Cialis/Viagra commercial?)

Obviously Certification favors the well run, properly managed site.  
Since management becomes more difficult as organizations increase in  
size, some of the names you would expect to seek certification cannot  
pass the muster.  (Or is that Mustard since you have been talking  
about Mustard lately.)

So it appears "Size does matter" but maybe not in the way we hear on  
sitcoms, etc.  (See how I kept myself out of trouble there.)  Our  
industry has seen a great deal of  consolidation in the last decade.  
Megacenters rise up in regional areas across the country. Smaller  
warehouses/records centers that housed 150,000 or 250,000 are being  
replaced by some vendors with cavernous facilities. These facilities  
may house 2 million, 3 million boxes or more in a single facility.

Over the course of the one month I was traveling, I was in California  
talking with an offsite storage company, a huge auto manufacturer  
records management consultant, in New Mexico at a high security  
facility and then in Texas at an offsite storage company in Austin,  
West Texas and then back to the East Coast for a meeting with an  
Upstate New York offsite storage company.  One theme repeated itself,  
"Boxes are being lost!", and not in the way of tapes in the news.  
These losses were simply the consolidation of warehouses leading to  
boxes disappearing in Ginormous warehouses.  This is not the "We  
moved some boxes around and it was misplaced and we will get back to  
you this afternoon." kind of loss.

This ripple in the pond seemed to track across the country. So much  
so that Certified Destruction companies are using their reputation to  
move into records management, media vaulting and so on.  Well run  
local offsite storage companies are seeing inquiries from the Fortune  
500 running from a problem since they make more requests they are  
seeing the problem first.

One effect is the movement of tapes to independent operators or the  
movement to disk to disk to eliminate an existing vendor.  Will this  
hasten the demise of box storage?

Another trend that was mentioned is the huge changeover from delivery  
schedules.  In the past a request from Monday prior to noon was  
responded to by a delivery the next day before noon.  24 hour turn  
around was the norm. Today the schedule for some firms present 48  
hours as the Standard. Anything shorter is an emergency rush and the  
delivery fee is much higher.  This makes the decision to keep boxes  
on the shelf even more expensive.  So we seem to come full circle  
where the smaller, more efficient and more secure records storage  
vendor has a place.

We are all quick to jump on IT for failures but these two items may  
have very negative consequences for Records Management.  They speak  
to your efficiency and worse your accuracy and trust.

Am I seeing the glass half full here?

As a barometer of our times, are you seeing a greater volume of  
misplaced boxes from your offsite storage provider?
If the box is lost, how long until you get it back? If ever?



Hugh Smith


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