Diversified Information Technologies (DIT) has purchased a 166,000 sqft building in Enfield Connecticut. The building was used as an envelope plant by the prior owners. DIT plans to use the facility for its records storage operations.

DIT is another company looking to expand to a national footprint. They are planning on opening records storage facilities in Columbia, Minneapolis, and Portland. These new national players are going to give the big incumbents a run for their money. They have the size to serve companies nationally but are not so big to be slow to react to customers.

Archive Systems has announced the purchase of Professional Records Management of Atlanta, Georgia. Professional Records Management focused on records storage services to the Atlanta metropolitan area. The acquisition expands the footprint of Archive Systems into Georgia. They currently offer service in New York, DC, Phoenix, Portland and Seattle.

Archive Systems plans to keep all of the former employees of Professional Records Management. Larry Corley, former owner, will stay on in the role of General Manager. Financial details of the sale were not disclosed.

One of the things that seem to confuse people about document scanning is dpi. This is an abbreviation for dots per inch.So it is how many measurements the scanner will make for every inch of the document. So the greater the dpi the finer grained the resulting digital image.

For black and white images it will either be measured as black or white so it is one bit per dot. For color images there are 48 bits per dot. So the size of the resulting digital image is a function of how many dpi and if it is color or black and white.

Now you know what dpi you might think that higher is better. But this is not always the case. So what is a good dpi for your document scanning project? The most common for standard office documents is 200dpi. That is sharp enough to be used read or re-printed. It is also good enough for OCR software. Consider for a second that back when we used to fax documents we were using 75dpi and they are readable and used as legal documents.

There are people who are convinced that 300dpi (or even greater) is a requirement. There is no doubt that it will achieve a "smoother" looking document. But the same result with software that every scanning service uses. Higher resolution scanning can also pick up dots in the original. This can be distracting and then the digital images need to be "cleaned" with the same software package that could have smoothed out the 200dpi scan.

The other thing to consider is the size of the digital image. A 300dpi is not 33% larger than a 200dpi one, it is over 500% larger. With a reasonable sized project that can result is significant increases in digital storage and backup required.

Perhaps the most important thing to consider is cost. It takes three times longer to scan at 300dpi than 200dpi. This either will cost you time to run them all through or increase the cost of the job if you have it outsourced.

So before you let someone talk you into a higher resolution consider why you really need it. We can scan at any dpi you specify but the cost to do the work and the cost to store the electronic records will change accordingly.

Retrievex has acquired Assured Records Storage of Altamonte, Florida. This marks the first location in Florida for Retrievex. Assured Records Storage provides document storage and shredding services to the Tampa and Orlando metropolitan areas. Details of the deal were not released.

Retrievex is emerging as one of the most active players in the mergers and acquisitions market for document management. They have a large footprint in the northeast. This brings them down to Florida. They also have locations extending west to Las Vegas. They are near a position where they can compete with others as a single source for national records storage contracts.

Cloud storage is a great solution for disaster recovery. Data is backed up to a location in a different geographic area. This becomes even more important is you are in an area prone to natural disasters. Some examples would be hurricanes on the Gulf Coast or earthquakes on the California coast. An example of an organization in the second category is the City of Carlsbad California.

The city did a good job of backing up their data but it was done in the same data center. They also use a tape rotation service. The city has moved to cloud storage located in Colorado. This protects the data from a regional disaster like an earthquake. The city can now open a new data center if the situation requires it.

Always remember 3-2-1 when backing up any data.

3 - Have at least three copies of the data.
2 - Store the copies in at least two formats. For example in a server and also on a backup tape.
1 - Have at least one copy in an off-site location. That doesn't mean in another room. An even better solution is to have it stored in a different region of the country.

Mattern & Associates is crowing about saving a law firm 25-30% on their record storage fees.They say this was done by having an open RFP for the services. What I found most interesting was the reduction of 35% for permanent withdrawal fees. Withdrawal fees are a dirty little secret in the industry and most insiders will know who likes to impose them. In the end if your customers are not happy then trying to hold them hostage for bail doesn't improve their impression of your organization.

If a service makes you pay to leave even if you have already completed the contract terms can not be very confident in their own customer service and pricing. If this is a sticking point for the service then it is time to get some competitive bids. A good records storage company will stand behind their customer service and not resort to lawyers or taking your documents hostage. In the end the law firm should have moved on to a better service.

We would like to wish you a happy and prosperous 2012.

If you are looking to upgrade your records management we are here to help.