Spokane could become a hub for data protection

Steve Tabacek, among others doing business in Spokane, is just waiting for the next big earthquake in the Seattle or Portland area.

Tom Sowa
The Spokesman-Review

Tabacek operates IT-Lifeline, a data backup and recovery company located in Steam Plant Square in downtown Spokane. His list of clients includes a few large banks and Rockwood Clinic. They pay IT-Lifeline to build rock-solid recovery plans for their data and key company information.

Companies like IT-Lifeline are doing fine finding customers around Spokane, North Idaho and Montana. But the real opportunity, say those watching the data-recovery industry, is along the Interstate 5 corridor from Northern California to Vancouver, B.C.

Thousands of West Coast companies will be looking for help in choosing safe backup recovery sites a couple hundred miles away from their main offices in the event of emergencies or natural disasters.

Which is where Spokane comes in.

Not long after the February 2001 earthquake that rocked the Seattle area, the Boeing Employees Credit Union started looking seriously at a backup site for its key financial and employee data.

Last year, the Tukwila, Wash.-based credit union decided to locate a backup site in Spokane, at Pinecroft Business Park in Spokane Valley. The BECU moved in this year. With a staff of 20, the center hums with backup servers that make sure any data that might be corrupted or damaged on the West Side is available from the Spokane site.

The credit union selected this region because Eastern Washington is fairly distant from the Puget Sound and the Seattle Fault Zone. But it also selected Spokane because of the plenitude of fiber-optic infrastructure here and well-trained technicians to operate the center.

Electricity here is still fairly cheap, and certainly looks price-competitive when our rates are compared with those in California the country’s primary location for large data centers.

"We have a heckuva lot of fiber for a community of our size," said John Everett, general manager for Columbia Fiber Solutions, which provides fiber services for area companies and schools. That’s why Tabacek, who launched IT-Lifeline earlier this year, is considering placing a branch office in Tacoma.

"I see Seattle, and that area as becoming a larger percentage of our business," he said. He’s only a two-person firm for now, and he doesn’t know how soon he can target the West Side for new customers.

But the big edge is federal regulations, he pointed out. Federal regulators already have rules affecting health care and financial service companies, requiring backup recovery systems located hundreds of miles away from their central offices.

Those regulations haven’t been well-understood by many companies. As compliance becomes a key concern, Tabacek and other data-management operators hope to sell them on Spokane.

"All this makes Spokane a perfect disaster recovery center for the Pacific Northwest," said Tabacek.

Area economic development planners could take Tabacek’s idea and push it even farther. Think of the opportunities if someone leased the huge Kaiser smelter at Mead and turned it into a monster data farm, hosting hundreds of servers managing and backing up data for companies across the nation.

The Kaiser facility already has fiber networks installed; it’s wired for megawatts of power. All it needs is someone to turn a 20th century industrial site into one attuned to the 21st century.

•Business writer Tom Sowa can be reached at (509) 459-5492 or by e-mail at [email protected]

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