NOVEMBER 28, 2019 – In tribute to the origins of the day, I’m plenty thankful for plenty—all the people and bounty in my life. But as we go ’round the turkey table expressing our individual thanks for one thing or another, I’ll have to say, “data storage.”
That’s right: data storage. Currently, I’m moving 20 years’ worth of electronic files from one part of “the cloud” to another—in earthbound terms, from a server farm in Utah (for all I know) to one in Washington.
My managed cloud services contract expires at the end of December. I’d been burdened with this contract for three years at $766.12 per month. (At its inception, before departures and retirements, the agreement had seemed like and probably was a good deal.) For a large firm, the cost would be a large multiple of that. But I run a small shop, and for all too long, I’ve been wincing every time $766.12 hits our checking account.
When my legal assistant dutifully alerted me to the deadline for avoiding an automatic three-year contract renewal, I directed her to send the requisite notice. Then the fun began.
The challenge was to find a less expensive, secure, cloud-based service that could host 20-years of accumulated electronic files—half a terabyte’s worth of data (not including storage of 60,000 email messages, which are a different challenge altogether).
In years past, we’d relied on an associate, whose added title was, “Resident Tech Person.” He’d left several years ago to pursue a niche practice with lower overhead—something I myself had done, in effect, 20 years ago! We parted ways on good terms, which is always a good thing, because in a small world, you just never know when you might need someone to give you the time of day . . . and some good tech advice.
I also sought ideas from others—my Millennial sons; a friend who owns a high-tech, data-management biz; and articles aimed at lawyers and law firms. Ultimately, though, I had to chart my own course through a mighty jungle of options. The expedition left me tired and bruised—but substantially better informed.
Starting January 1, I will be reducing my tech costs to less than 10% of the current rate. Yesterday, with a full month to spare, I watched thousands upon thousands of documents flutter through the ether from one gigantic server farm to another. This whole operation took many hours. Toward the end of one phase, I checked my watch. Ironically, it’d stopped altogether over three hours before!
At day’s end, I imagined—or more precisely, I tried to imagine—how many file cabinets or storage boxes would be required to accommodate all those files if they were in paper form. I’m old enough to remember when physical storage of “hard copies” was the only feasible “back-up” system. And upon retirement, then what? Ship or shred.
And so, on this day, I’m thankful for many things, and “data storage” is among them.
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© 2019 Eric Nilsson
