In response to numerous customer concerns regarding their offsite storage service providers, DataBank commissioned an extensive market research program between 1998 and 1999. The market research report revealed that a large number of blue chip companies within the financial services, telecommunications, manufacturing, and professional services sector expressed serious concerns with the service they were receiving, in a number of key areas.

The specific concerns that these companies raised were as follows:

Security & Environmental Concerns around facilities, infrastructure and transportation

• Where are our tapes going, how and by whom are they being transported?

Lack of focus on IT issues and IT Solutions

• What media do I have off-site and on-site?
• How can I track my media in rotation?
• How can I perform timely audits?

Inflexible and manually-driven systems

• Resulting in a cumbersome service with inaccurate scheduling and billing information

Low appreciation of the critical nature of data centre operations

• Resulting in a low adherence to Service Level Agreements.

From a study of over 100 blue chip companies, 3 major business issues were isolated as CRITICAL, and could never be compromised in the service they were receiving

1. Timely and Accurate Availability of Data

Fast access to information when required – i.e. tape retrieval times / adherence to SLA’s.  Ability to find the right tape every time. They expressed a desire for a tape tracking software program, with search functionality.

2. Extreme level of Privacy & Security

No compromise on the level of security undertaken to make sure the information on the tapes were to be kept confidential.

3. Data Integrity

Under no circumstances was corporate data to be subject to environmental or other potentially damaging influences.

After studying the results of the market research, DataBank decided to enter the offsite tape storage business in 1999, by creating DataBank Technologies Offsite Tape Storage Services. They did so with the specific intent of providing a service level that eliminated all the concerns raised in the market research.