You Create Data and Ideas. We Keep em Safe. by John Sharpe

It seems simple enough: Think of a great idea, and then build a successful business around it. In practice, this is pretty hard to do.For every Facebook or Apple, there are thousands of ideas that have limited success, or never even make it to market. Yet we root for the guy in the garage with great data and ideas to get that big break. We even create reality television shows about these individuals, such as Shark Tank or All-American Makers.

Ideas are why companies exist. Ideas create new products,new services and new markets. Along with ideas comes information, such as: engineering,marketing, sales, financial, regulatory, human resources and a myriad of other data.What starts out as a few files on a laptop or notepad soon grows into a mountain of stuff that your company has to manage.

Thus is born one of the major reasons that companies have IT teams: to keep track of all the stuff generated by those ideas. For ideas that are fresh and new, IT might provide collaboration tools like Jive or SharePoint. As ideas mature and become core to the business, they will spawn information in any number of applications, like those supporting operations,finance or human resources. Ultimately, though, all that information gets stored as data files on storage devices either in your own data center or in the cloud.

IT has to devote tremendous resources towards keeping that data accessible, safe and secure. If on premise, those resources will be in capital and labor; if cloud based, they will be in operating expenses. For IT teams struggling with budget issues -that would be all of them - managing this information is a big part of keeping the lights on.

While managing backups is a basic staple of IT, things get more complicated when you introduce regulatory requirements like HIPAA, SOX or data privacy; retention requirements for financial information and legal hold sand e-discoveryneeds. Without special training and processes, your IT team may not be able to meet legal or compliance rules. A simple idea can create a very long tail of technology, process and labor needs.

So what should you do? For some, outsourcing all of IT has been the answer, but this creates its own set of management problems and can often limit innovation and speed of delivery. A better answer is to look to a provider who understands the life cycle of information and all its nuances: Iron Mountain.

Iron Mountain is the global expert in data management for thousands of companies, including more than 94% of the Fortune 1000. We take a holistic approach to data management, with products and services that cover the entire range of backup, archiving, recovery,restoration and disposal. Whether your data is physical media, in your data center, or in the cloud, Iron Mountain can help you. We believe that you need to focus on creating new ideas for your company's success, while we keep your information and data safe, secure, and accessible. To learn more about how to manage your data throughout its lifecycle with backup and archiving best practices, view the Archiving and Backup Best Practices eBook.

LINK:	http://blogs.ironmountain.com/2015/service-lines/data-backup-and-recov...
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