Moving and Storage Business News

The News Review:

- Bloomberg.com: Investment Tools
- User performs data storage U-turn
- Move for Less

Bloomberg.com: Investment Tools
Bloomberg – Aug 30, 2007
B&B has bought a British self-storage company for close to$126. The company wants to expand in the self-storage market andplans to be one of the UK's biggest space providers within five years. Self-storage has huge potential as populations grow, real estate becomes moreexpensive and commercial space dwindles. Babcock & Brown posted recordearnings last year.

User performs data storage U-turn
Search Storage – Aug 30, 2007
In an effort to get business decision-makers at the company closer to its retail outlets in the field, the company decentralized its data centers and its data, returning some of its storage area network (SAN) data to direct-attached storage (DAS), outsourced its backup and used WAFS from Riverbed to tie it all together. The company moved from a centralized data center in Cleveland, in which it managed 2 terabytes (TB) of data on an HP MSA 1000 SAN, including a clustered Exchange server, to five main offices divided by region. The company now has dispersed headquarters in Cleveland and Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is the the primary data site, and Cleveland is the disaster recovery site…
The MSA, however, remains in place — serving files. The company decided to consolidate five file servers into one more powerful Windows host, and the MSA was the only device with enough storage space to accommodate all the data. “It was a conscious decision,” Nair said of moving the database off the SAN. The SQL server is running a financial application, Great Plains, which is tied in to the company’s Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance. The company plans to upgrade from version 8 to version 10 of Great Plains soon, and SOX dictates extensive testing when upgrading such applications. Nair said the easiest way to perform this testing is to build an entirely new environment, which is cheaper and simpler to do with DAS. To get all this accomplished, the company also used an unorthodox method of data migration.

Move for Less
Motley Fool – Aug 30, 2007
Shop around for a moving service. Get multiple estimates before you choose a mover, and remember that the cheapest available isn’t always the best. The American Moving and Storage Association has prepared a very thorough. Make sure you understand what kind of liability the moving company assumes if your goods get damaged or stolen during transit…
Make sure you understand what kind of liability the moving company assumes if your goods get damaged or stolen during transit. Do your own packing. Paying the moving company to pack your goods can add up to a lot of money spent on something you could have done yourself. The moving company might say it takes no responsibility for items you’ve packed if they get damaged during shipping — and if that’s the case, let the moving company pack only your irreplaceable goods, and still pack the rest on your own. If you have heirlooms, consider transporting them yourself.