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We took the idea from the black box on airplanes,
a box who's purpose is to save data and survive a plane crash,
and we found a way to implement this for computer centers.
What we've solved this way is one of the most difficult problems that exists
with data preservation these days for computer centers.
Which is the problem that you can either
keep a full copy of the data nearby until the last second before the disaster,
or you can keep the data much further away,
but then when a disaster happens, you always lose part of the information.
With the help on a box like this we make it possible, in an emergency,
to activate a secondary computing center, at a great distance,
without losing any data, and which can continue from the moment that the first center stopped.
I'll just say that to carry out the next best solution to this problem,
and not a full solution either, what people do is build three sites,
two close by and one far away.
Then, of course, the problem remains of what happens in disasters where the two closer centers are destroyed,
like earthquakes, extensive blackouts, floods, natural disasters, and things like that.
But here there's the immediate cost of an additional computing center,
and if we're on the subject, in order to carry this out properly,
what you're really talking about is between six and eight full copies of all the data.
So without going into a breakdown of the expenses,
it's obvious that a box like this doesn't cost as much as an computing center.
There are other savings, on communication lines,
and control, and where the people are,
and good utilization of resources, and many other things.
The difference in the prices is simply enormous.
We checked out a number of ways for getting the data out immediately after a disaster,
and we looked at the cellular network, and it's quite impressive what goes on with these networks.
At first glance it looked to us like something completely unfeasible,
A. the networks are rather slow,
B. we thought that after a disaster the network is the first thing that would be destroyed.
So, first of all it turns out that these networks are very dependable,
because the antennas cover for each other,
so a very large amount of antennas need to be destroyed to knock out the network.
The network is extremely sturdy, much more then the cable network, where it's enough to cut one cable....