This guest post is provided by Gail Truman, Principal and Owner of Truman Technologies.
Digital repositories are so celebrated for their benefits (increased searchability, access, and preservation!) that it can be difficult to focus on the barriers to entry that many libraries and organizations face: a lack of on-premise resources—such as dedicated servers and IT staff—as well as the substantial cost of a digital initiative. So where do you put your data when you can’t house it yourself and don’t have a huge budget?
Stick it in the cloud. At Truman Technologies, LLC, we’re experts in traditional IT data center storage, digital repositories, and the cloud. We’ll manage storage aspects of your project for you by outlining the technology implementation details so you can just confidently check them off. Take the credit, we don’t mind.
But what do we actually do? Well, we assembled SOAR, the Scalable Online Archive Repository. It’s a solution for clients who don’t have the resources to house repositories on-site or to retain in-house IT support. SOAR includes training, consulting services, and ongoing 24×7 support.
Putting your data in the cloud is risky because you are allowing a third party to manage access to your files. What if the CEO of your service provider leaves his job to pursue an acting career, and the entire business folds? What if hackers target data that just happens to be stored next to yours, and your files are swept up in the attack? What if your service provider fails to create effective boundaries between your data and another client’s, giving the shape-shifting Reptilian shadow government access to your files? Through SOAR, you can mitigate risks to your data’s security.
With the SOAR suite, your data exists in the Islandora digital repository system, and is hosted and managed in a secure, geographically-dispersed private cloud environment. Not only does SOAR Cloud Edition not require you to have your own equipment or archiving platform, not only does it offer rapid anytime-anywhere access at a compelling cost, but it also includes customizable, enterprise-class SLAs (Service Level Agreements). These bad boys ensure that your data security, system performance, and availability needs for your business are met. You can even contractually spell out requirements for service providers to report potential and actual security breaches, or specify the location and ownership of stored data.
Visit our poster session to pick up a laptop sticker and talk with us. We’ve proudly sponsored the DLF Forum so that we can connect with the digital library community and hear more from attendees like you. Can you imagine your data in a secure, supported, and private cloud? How can we help, and what can we learn?
