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For companies that need imaging services, the considerations for hardware, software, and skilled labor can be a real headache. Imaging and document management service bureaus, like Datamation Imaging Services Corp. (Hinsdale, IL), have been relieving that pain for many years now. These bureaus typically pick up boxes of documents and return images of the documents on CDs. But, the Internet is changing all that and making customers' images available to them with the click of a mouse.

As Datamation's ASP business continues to grow, its mass storage requirements will too. If the company decides to continue to host the data itself, there are critical issues to consider. "There will be terabytes' worth of data to store," said James D. Collins, president.

Outsourcing Comes To Imaging With ASP
The newest movement in the imaging industry is to provide the images on the Web through an ASP (application service provider) outsourcing model. This way the customer doesn't have to wait for a CD delivery of digital documents. The customer needs nothing more than a PC, an Internet browser, and a password to retrieve its images.

Corporate America has embraced outsourcing for the past 20 years, and the types of services that can be outsourced continue to grow. ASPs are one of the hottest types of outsourcers today. Datamation's ASP service is a secure online document depository called Datamation Digital Vault (DDV). "We offer a virtual image repository, whereby we will store images and information on our servers," said Collins. "We provide our customers with a broadband connection to our site. Through an Internet browser, our customers enter our site to access their documents and data. They make no investment in hardware, software, training, tech support, or storage. They only pay a monthly fee based on the number of images we handle for them."

Even before offering the ASP model, a couple of good sales last year resulted in a growth rate of 300% for Datamation. The company was still small and rather new at the time. That type of phenomenal growth rate won't be as easy to attain as the company grows larger and each sale is proportionately smaller than the total. With the strong trend toward outsourcing, though, Datamation intends to use its ASP service to increase the company's revenue at a rate of 50% to 100% over the next few years.

Just last month, the November 2000 issue of Business Solutions featured a similar integrator, National Consulting and Development (NCD) (Eastlake, OH). "Should You Be An ASP?" focused on the ASP aspect itself, while this month's article will look at what ASPs need to know if they decide to handle their customers' mass storage requirements. Datamation anticipates storing terabytes of data as its ASP collects its customers' data into the document repository.

The biggest mass storage considerations for an ASP revolve around data security, capacity, manageability, and speed. "Datamation employs multiple servers that incorporate firewall, encryption, and password security," said David J. Ruschel, Datamation's executive VP of sales and marketing. All data is stored in RAID level 5 and backed up on CD or DVD for permanency. Redundancy is built into the system to help ensure maximum uptime. Multiple electrical systems with back-up generators help insure that the system stays running. It is designed to meet peak volumes with a solid bandwidth foundation.

ASP Storage Types And Architectures
The first thing an ASP must consider is the nature of mass storage it will use to handle the data its customers generate. Datamation chose RAID (redundant array of independent disks) storage because its cost has decreased so significantly over the past couple of years. RAID can also offer a combination of high capacity and fast retrieval. But there are ASPs that prefer to store images on optical jukeboxes because of the permanency of the data. This is an issue in financial and pharmaceutical verticals. Recent government regulations, like SEC 17, require that certain data be written to unalterable media. There are also ASPs that use RAID, optical, and then back the data up to tape.

ASPs may also want to consider newer storage architectures like SANs (storage area networks) and NAS (network attached storage). SAN allows multiple servers to access the same bank of storage. SANs are still expensive and complicated to install, but are more accessible when building a brand-new architecture. Since SANs operate over Fibre Channel, the increased speed would enhance performance of the ASP. If an ASP chooses to adopt a NAS architecture, the benefits include easy, plug and play installation and the ability to take the storage management off of the server. This also enhances performance.

Capacity - Make Sure It's Adequate And Scalable
Whatever type of storage and architecture the ASP chooses, capacity is an important issue. While no one wants to pay for more than what is needed, it's essential to have ample storage for customers. This requires anticipating and forecasting customers' data storage needs. So, the storage configuration of an ASP must be scalable to allow for capacity addition. Marc Farley discussed "just in time" storage in the May 15, 2000 storage issue of Business Solutions. Another popular term is "capacity on demand."

When Datamation signs on a new customer, it analyzes the customer's volume of documents and how much storage will be needed. "If we process 5,000 to 20,000 pages per day for the customer, it may need 250 GB to 300 GB of storage online, said Collins. "We'll set up an array that is 30% to 40% larger because many customers underestimate their volume." As new customers are added and data storage needs increase, Datamation's IT staff adds capacity according to preset thresholds.

Make Sure The Data Is Solid And Available
Any customer who will trust an ASP to not only provide a critical software application, but will also allow the ASP to archive its images does not want to be let down. Redundancy is key when handling customers' data. Datamation uses RAID 5, striping the data to multiple disks, ensuring accurate restoration of data in case of failure.

Power failures happen, and ASPs must be prepared for them. Datamation installed backup generators in case the lights go out. It's also possible to mirror data remotely in a different part of the country where the power system is on a different power grid. This allows the ASP to continue to operate when the secondary site takes over. Data can also be backed up from the remote physical site.

As mentioned before, data integrity is important. But in some vertical markets data integrity is the law. Data must not only be accurate, it must be retained for a required number of years, especially in the financial industry.

Deliver The Data Like Lightning
Everything is in place, the software, the hardware, and the customers. If those customers can't retrieve their data in the blink of an eye, they're going to start complaining. Bandwidth is a topic of conversation everywhere in the IT world. You may have the ability to store the mammoth amount of data your customers generate, but the pipelines that send the data back and forth are not always big enough.

As in the case of storage capacity, forecasting is essential in making sure there is enough bandwidth to handle data traffic. Most data transmission employs T1 lines, introduced by the Bell System in the 1960s. T1 lines, which operate at 1.544 Mbps, are the most commonly used digital line in the United States, Canada, and Japan. But, T3 lines are becoming common and offer a transfer rate of 44.736 Mbps. A newer format, OC3 (optical character) operates at a significantly higher rate of 155.52 Mbps.

"We forecast the volume of our total activity," said Ruschel. "Our technicians put together formulas on how much average and peak activity we process, and from that they analyze the size of the bandwidth we need. Currently, we use OC3 lines and additional T1 lines for backup. We will continue to add bandwidth as we need it." Datamation uses OC3 and T1 lines to make sure its customers' images don't have to be stuffed down a too-small pipe.

Corporate America has put its arms around outsourcing. This has opened the door for companies like Datamation to provide more services for its customers. In the imaging industry, qualified, steady employees are hard to retain, and many of Datamation's customers find it easier to turn the process over to an expert. Datamation gives its customers the option of scanning documents themselves, or of outsourcing the scanning.

Any integrator that is considering hosting not only applications, but also customer data, must consider the important factors that go along with that responsibility. Some ASPs choose to outsource the data to an SSP (storage service provider). SSPs with large data centers specialize in making sure data is reliable, redundant, and secure. But, ASPs interested in offering document repositories themselves, like Datamation is doing, must have the IT staff to manage the data. The ASP must forecast capacity and speed needs, identify areas that need to be upgraded, and make sure the upgrades are performed.