Metrofile, South Africa`s fastest-growing storage and retrieval company, is feeling the increasing demand for outsourced off-site storage leading up to the new millennium. Established 13 years ago, Metrofile is a member of the JSE-listed MGX Holdings group of companies and holds by far the largest share of the off-site storage market.
"It`s one thing making consistent backups of your data and another making sure those backups are there when you need them," says Metrofile`s Datasure/Mag manager John Woodhouse. "South African companies are beginning to recognise the importance of off-site storage as an integral part of their digital backup and disaster recovery strategies."
Because of the volumes of paper-based and digital storage involved, most companies contract their off-site storage to specialist companies best equipped to deal with, index and manage their storage requirements. Metrofile currently manages billions of paper documents for their clients stored in over two million boxes countrywide.
"Our paper volumes are astounding," says Woodhouse. "We`re building a new 5000sqm warehouse in Gowie to handle 250,000 boxes, adding a further 100,000 box capacity to our Cape Town vaults and planning ahead for an expected 10% growth per client or 30,000 boxes per month."
As for digital storage, Woodhouse says demand is increasing at a rate of over 15 clients a month, each with hundreds of megabytes of digital storage media.
"We have six storage vaults in four major regions countrywide, each containing over 94 000 tapes and digital media from DAT, DLT and CD-ROM," he adds. "As yet we haven`t received orders for DVD media but expect the demand to skyrocket with the boom of the technology."
Where reel to reel tapes are showing their age, DAT, DLT and even CD-RW media are coming into their own as digital leaders.
"Only large corporates with long-standing investments in reel-to-reel tapes continue to store this media with us, but the numbers are dwindling," says Woodhouse.
Metrofile`s Datasure service is specifically designed to cope with the growing volumes of digital media passing through it premises every day. Its express delivery vehicle fleet makes over 350 stops at selected clients each day, excluding unscheduled and express deliveries.
"Time is of the essence in any recovery plan as time lost in recovery is both costly and embarrassing to the business," says Woodhouse. "As an outsourcing service designed to replicate and exceed our client`s internal service standards we must be flexible enough to anticipate rapid media delivery around the clock and establish concrete SLAs for any contingency."
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