Key to business continuity: Microfilm
Companies have two types of information — active, and semi-active; active information should be stored digitally, but this solution may be too expensive and demanding for semi-active information, so storing it on microfilm may be the best solution
There is a growing trend among large corporations to focus on business continuity in the face of more stringent corporate governance requirements, increasing security uncertainties, and the need to keep critical areas of business running, no matter what. As often happens in a world dominated by technology, business continuity is more often than not associated with making sure applications, data, and computers are available at a separate location in the event the company’s primary business site is unusable. Paul Mullon, marketing director of Metrofile, says that “while no continuity planner would ever neglect to ensure all their company’s active data held in corporate databases is backed up and available offsite, making sure semi-active and archived data is also available is often forgotten.”
Converting documents to electronic format is the right approach when it comes to active data. Even in the business continuity context, keeping a real-time mirror copy of active data offsite can be a realistic option and well worth the cost. The costs of keeping semi-active and archived data “live” in a disaster-recovery location, on the other hand, cannot realistically be justified. For data of secondary importance there is an alternative — reference archive media. When documents are transformed into electronic format, it is a simple task to convert the images onto microfilm at the same time. This media can then be moved to the disaster recovery location to be used in case of emergencies — and this data store also acts as an additional backup location.
