An international study has found that small and medium sized businesses (SMBs), are choosing to adopt some form of cloud computing technology to prepare their businesses, so that they can continue to operate effectively in the event of a disaster.
Disaster recovery and business continuity have long been important aspects of the cloud, but the survey from security firm, Symantec, shows that the global business market is beginning to accept this on a significant scale.
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Steve Wozniak, one of the world’s most influential tech industry insiders and the man who co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs, has given an interview to Australian sites News.com.au, in which he said that his home in California lacks any kind of broadband internet access.
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Unified business communications provider Daisy Group today (Thursday 10 May 2012) opened the 12 tonne bomb proof door to its Manchester data centre, the most powerful and secure data storage facility in central Manchester.
The company has recently completed a £1m investment programme in the subterranean facility, situated within a former Bank of England bullion vault.
This investment has been used to improve Daisy’s infrastructure, increase network capacity and launch its CloudSelectTM, computing-on-demand, offering.
Will Kennedy, Corporate Sales Director at Daisy, said: “We’ve been hosting data for more than 13 years and have seen the market and the demand for secure storage increase dramatically in that time. The new facilities and space that we have created in our Manchester data centre mean that we’re able to open up our world-class hosting solutions to any kind of business, large or small, that require secure and instant access to their data and applications.”
In addition to being 25 feet below ground, the data centre’s raft of security features also includes two metre thick granite walls and a 60 centimetre bomb blast corridor surrounding the data storage area. It is continuously monitored by 70 CCTV cameras and access is granted only to authorised personnel.
Built in 1999, the data centre currently houses critical data for some of the UK’s largest organisations, with clients including Manchester Airports Group, Racing Post and Trinity Mirror.
Will said: “Millions of pounds worth of transactions take place online every day and it is facilities like ours that make this possible. We’ve all heard the horror stories and seen the millions wiped off the value of companies when technology lets them down, our data centres offer a cast iron guarantee of absolute security, power, speed and 100% availability – the watchwords of any business operating online today.”
The data centre has an uninterrupted power supply and has three standby diesel generators, which would be triggered in the event of a power failure. It also uses a cooling system to ensure the temperature is kept at an optimum level.
The Manchester data centre is one of four that Daisy operates across the UK, the others being located in London Docklands, Southampton and Jersey. All centres are connected to Daisy’s national fibre network, which delivers superior bandwidth to give faster response times. There is also access to a variety of additional network security services, ensuring Daisy can protect customer data from any unforeseen attacks.
Talmon Marco, one of the founders of US VoIP service, Viber, was involved in an interesting series of events this week, according to a report from The Next Web.
Mr Marco was apparently onboard a domestic flight in America operated by airline firm Delta, when he tried to use his smartphone to make a mobile VoIP call, presumably using his own company’s service.
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This week it was announced by BT that the roll out of fibre optic broadband services in the UK is actually ahead of schedule, with a key landmark reached eight months before its planned deadline.
The Guardian reports that 10 million businesses and homes are now able to connect to its FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) services, well before the end of the year, as had originally been proposed as a cut off point.
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