John is the owner of a small media house and as part of ongoing renovations in his company he wants to change the existing storage system. Currently, the company has two storage systems, a wooden cabinet to keep the papers and a media storage system where the media files both audio and video are stored in some hard drives, CDs and DVDs. However, in a recent fire caused by a short-circuit most of the paper documents were burnt and some of the media storage devices were damaged. Therefore, to prevent such a loss in near future, John is looking for something that could provide not only complete media storage solutions but also provide security to his documents.
After consultations with storage experts and friends, John has decided to go for an offsite media solution provider who has not only offered storage solutions for all his media files but has also agreed to carry out PDF conversions for the paper documents so that they could also be stored in media storage devices. John is not only happy with the arrangement but is also feeling secure that his entire document collective will be free from any kind of in-house damage.
Like John, if you too are looking for a media storage solution, here are a few advantages of offsite media storage solution that will help you in your decision making.
Frees Up Your Storage Space
The media storage solution provider takes the responsibility for all your documents as well as media files. So, you do not have to worry about reserving a particular space to store them. They are secure and safe with the media storage solution provider. Even the in-house storage for the paper documents could be freed once their PDF conversions are done and their soft copies sent to the offsite location.
Retrieval upon Request
If you need to view a document, you no longer have to ask somebody to fetch the file from the document’s cabinet. You simply need to access the server of the media storage solution and access the file. Moreover, it does not require you to be in office to access your files. You can access and retrieve them from anywhere provided you have the access credentials with you.
Reliable and Customised Sharing
With a media storage solution you can restrict the access to your files. Unlike hard copies of the paper documents stored in your office which could be accessed by anybody in your office unless you lock them up and keep the keys with you, you could restrict access right on the files stored in the media storage server. For example, you could provide read-only access of a file to one of your employees who alone needs to view the file; while the same file could be shared with another employee who needs to make changes in that document with both read and write access of that file.
Sit Back and Relax
Since your files are not within the office premises, you can sit back and relax because all of your important data are safe from any theft, fire or other in-house disaster. It also saves you from being a victim of phishing, insider trading and corporate espionage. Moreover, the offsite media storage solution provider stores multiple copies of your files at numerous servers across different locations. Therefore, any loss of data from one of the locations will not press much stress on you as they are secure in another location.
Search without Sweating
Searching paper documents are always a cumbersome task and it becomes tedious if you have to search an old file from a huge pile of folders jam-packed into your cabinet. With document stored in media storage, you don’t have to sweat hard to search and retrieve a particular file, however old it may be. You just need to use the search feature and within a moment the file is in front of you on your computer monitor.
Syed Afzal Hussain is an Instructional Designer by vocation and a freelance blogger for records management. He loves blogging on storage technology, for example, advantages of electronic storage solutions, why media storage solutions are necessary and offsite electronic storage vs. traditional paper archive storage.