Recall Lets Customers Track the Movement of Their Tapes

March 20, 2012 Alex Woodie

IT shops that are concerned about the chain of custody of their backup tapes after they’re sent off site may be interested in a new tape tracking solution unveiled recently by Recall.

The Georgia company, which stores physical and digital assets for more than 80,000 companies at 300 temperature-controlled “operations centers” around the world, this month unveiled ReQuest Web, a new app that allows customers to track the custody of their backup tapes through a Web portal.

ReQuest Web tells customers the location of their tapes or other media, and also displays proof-of-service signatures for tracking purposes. Customers can generate custom reports in real time and export them as PDFs, the company says. The online portal can also be customized to meet the security needs of the customer.

Recall developed the new service with its partner DHS Worldwide Software Solutions, a Florida developer of Windows-based records management software.

Recall provides an array of data protection services, including tape and document management and storage, RFID-enabled tape tracking, business continuity plan creation, and data or document destruction services.

Despite the increasing popularity of alternative data storage mechanisms, such as cloud-based data vaulting, tape is still widely used by businesses for backup and archival purposes. The latest tape drives can store more than a terabyte of data on a single tape, giving it a price/performance that disk and online storage can’t match. Also, the portability of tape makes it beneficial for disaster recovery purposes.

For more information about ReQuest Web, see the vendor’s website at www.recall.com.