The music and movie industries left their tapes in the dust long ago, but IT companies still primarily use tape for data backup instead of readily available disk-to-disk services. Bob Boyer, senior vice president of Ixilix, a Broomall-based leading provider of hosting, managed infrastructure and business continuity services, says the reason is more than analog tape’s lower cost.
“Nobody wakes up and says I’m going to do this today,” says Boyer. “There’s an innate conservatism within IT, especially for things like data backup that aren’t very sexy and don’t bring in new revenue.”
Ixilix, a newly launched division of Fastech Integrated Solutions, LLC, is carving out a nice little niche for itself with companies in Southeastern Pa., including software as a service outfits. If a company’s tape library is older than 2 1/2 years, disk-based backup can be cheaper.
Boyer says multiple tape drives to run a tape library–most public companies keep tapes for seven years, and technology changes–can run about $150,000. Also, a company can pay up to $100,000 just to have a pick-up service that takes the tapes offsite. Boyer says this service isn’t secure and tapes are too often lost in the process.
While hard disks are more expensive than tape, the technology of deduplication–or the elimination of redundant data–has also made disk-to-disk backup more cost-effective. Beyond that, Ixilix’s disk-to-disk backup, conducted through a secure VPN connection, eliminates security risks like a fire or stolen equipment.
Ixilix, one-third of which is owned by New Spring Capital in Radnor, has data storage centers outside of Philadelphia in Broomall and in Reading and is planning on opening a facility outside of Pittsburgh sometime this summer.
“We’re in the early stages and have had a lot of good interest,” says Boyer. “People like to know where their data is and that’s why we’ve positioned our centers where we have.”
Source: Bob Boyer, Ixilix
Writer: Joe Petrucci