For all you "information governors" out there, here is an opportunity to look like a genius to your upper management. We are seeing several different players offering wholesale and retail colocation of data centers. The latest the Underground version??  Now imagine you bring to that leased space co-location data center the concept that once they place servers in your leased site  that they in effect entrusts the lease operator with the information based on servers. This operator will soon create fees based on moving data around???? (Concept based on utility charges, T-1 lines and such, fiber optic lines)

Remember the days where you placed a box in offsite storage and if you wanted to pull it out permanently, they would charge the same as a reference fee.  Or at worst a minimal permanent removal fee based on pulling a larger than normal amount.

But that evolved to where Permanent Removal is now a real Hostage Fee.  $10 to $15.00 per box to really make the withdrawal punitive so you can never leave.  I heard of $35.00 a box in one market trying to fight off the merger and acquisition guys.

What if these same people start hosting data centers???? Since REIT’s pay a large dividend on profits and they are required to distribute them at a high rate, the stockholders will do almost anything to drive those fees up.  And almost anything to make sure you can never leave.  Enter the Hostage Fee on Servers and maybe blocks of data. Say you are storing 1,000 GB but find a cheaper home ( or a new and better technology)  and try to move and they have a hostage fee of $1,000 per GB?

The CIO and CFO has long looked at the insanity at being entrapped with hostage fees on box. If you want to be an Information Governance Professional that entails keeping your information free range at your whim.  Don’t be entrapped again. The Cloud service people include in their contracts a clause that signs away your right to the records stored in the Cloud after a time period.  That is step 1 in coming back and demanding a Removal Fee to gain control again.

The ability to pull your servers out of the co-location centers at your will is crucial. The ability to maintain control of the data and that it never ceases to be owned by your company is fundamental. 
If you cannot maintain control of your records in every possible format with total freedom then the concept of Information Governance is impossible, IMHO.

These REIT’s will look for profit wherever then can and Hostage Fees will be a part of the future. Alert Legal to the concern. (You will look like a genius. )  

After all, the shredding of box records has been accelerated as a tactic to remove records from hostage fee situations and thus shortened the life of the box on the shelf. (Average life 16 years on shelf in 1990, Average life in 2000 just 10 years, in 2010 just 5 years; and we are moving to 3 years very soon. )  It is now also driving paper onto the Cloud.  Ironic what opening the door to Hostage Fees has done to our industry.

Let IT process the data but try to gain some control over it by being in the room when these contracts are drawn up.  A records manager alias governator who can see the future trend and not react is __________??

Hugh Smith
FIRELOCK Fireproof Modular Vaults
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(610)  756-4440    Fax (610)  756-4134
WWW.FIRELOCK.COM

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