Tech groups unite on security facility

Four of the State's largest tech companies have joined to launch a "proof of concept" facility for disaster recovery and data rescue.

Dell, EMC, Esat BT and Nortel Networks have opened a dual-centre "business continuity" demonstration site that links Dell's Limerick centre and EMC's Cork centre by a state-of-the-art fibre-optic network.

The companies believe the site is the only one of its kind in Europe and perhaps globally.

Business continuity services - designed to not only back up all an organisation's data offsite, but also to enable the systems of an organisation to return to working order after failure - are a growing business since the attacks of September 11, 2001, said Mr Martin Hingley, analyst with International Data Corporation (IDC).

After many companies in the attacks lost all their corporate data, and hundreds folded because of the loss, businesses realised they need to not just back-up data to a safe location but also to bring their systems back online as fast as possible.

"We definitely feel the timing is right for this," said Mr Kevin Libert, director, EMEA business systems, Dell.

Launched this month, the facility features a 100km high-bandwidth fibre network operating between Dell and EMC, and uses Dell hardware and EMC storage products.

The partners in the facility say they couldn't have offered such a service even as recently as 1999 because the network capacity wasn't available globally. In addition, noted Mr Libert, telecommunications costs have "fallen dramatically", making such a service viable even for mid-sized organisations. Esat/BT said bandwidth costs are now 20 per cent of what they were two to three years ago.

"It's about providing productive protection for companies," said Mr Nigel Ghent, EMC regional marketing manager, northern Europe.

Mr Libert said that the continuing consolidation of storage hardware and services with multi-purpose servers - powerful computers that manage applications and large volumes of data efficiently - lets companies take advantage of new capabilities of the technology at far lower prices.

The companies "wanted to make these data centres perform as if they were next door to each other," said Mr Chris Sweetapple, director of market development for optical enterprise at Nortel.

The costs for the service start at €146,000 for each end of the network, and rise to €270,000 per side for high-end service.

Dell and EMC already partner to bring customers to their facilities to see their storage and hardware package offerings. The new facility will target potential EMEA customers, the companies said.