Disaster recovery has traditionally only really served mainframes and mid-range computers until the advent of Data Preference, so says Harry Scott, general manager of computer business for Livingstone Hire Ltd. Data Preference, a division of Livingstone Hire, has according to Scott captured a niche market for providing disaster recovery support for personal computers. The company’s disaster recovery capability is a logical extension to its core business – computer rental. Up until nine months ago the company dealt with short term to mid-term rental of personal computers or Unix-based workstations. Customers were promised a 24-hour delivery service. According to Scott, customers started to request short-term rental of computers for disaster recovery purposes and out of this request sprung the personal computer disaster recovery service. As the name suggests, the service only covers fire, flood and power failure, which precludes companies from using the service if the computer system simply fails. The subscription fee to the service is costed at 15% of the capital value of the customer’s business-critical system. Data Preference has a reserve of around 50 terminals, 15 laser printers, 30 personal computers and four servers that it guarantees will be ready to deliver within four hours of the original request. The Data Preference contract states that it will not sell subscriptions for the same piece of equipment to more than 10 subscribers, in the belief that this will guard against two companies requesting the same thing at the same time. Data Preference will not take on two companies within 500 yards of each other either, just in case power failure, for example, affects the systems in a whole area and the company is left unable to provide succour two subscribing companies. So far the company has nine subscribers, believed to include Powergen Plc and The Royal Liver Insurance Plc. However, it is currently formalising a contract with a firm that has a second system for core business applications that will only be used in emergency. Data Preference plans to market the capacity, of these machine and thereby swell its stocks by 200 personal computers.
