Citing Sandy, Data Center Firm Adds Disaster Recovery Space

xand-DataCenter

A look inside the Xand data center in Westchester County, New York. Xand is adding 35,000 square feet of disaster recovery space. (Photo: Xand).

Data center and managed services provider Xand has added new disaster recovery space, citing increased demand in the wake of Hurricane Sandy as the impetus for the move. The 35,000 square feet of new dedicated and shared workspace will be added to its facilities in Marlborough, Mass. and Hawthorne, N.Y. The new space will be available to clients as private suites, shared workspace, and combinations of both, and is scheduled to be online during the first quarter of 2013.

“During Hurricane Sandy, we enabled a multitude of businesses and organizations to rapidly rebound from the devastating effects of the storm,” said Yatish Mishra, Xand’s President and CTO. “With the addition of over 35,000 square feet of brand new workspace, we’re excited to offer even more disaster recovery options for our existing customers, while continuing to welcome new clients who are reassessing their current business continuity needs.”

1,000 Customers On-Site During Hurricane

Xand has six facilities, which provided a home to nearly 1,000 customer staff members during Hurricane Sandy, with over half of those folks at the Valley Forge, Pennsylvania facility. The company says it was able to accommodate several new clients, as well whose previous providers couldn’t meet their Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs).

Xand maintained 100 percent uptime in all of their data center facilities during the storm. All six of Xand’s locations are well-positioned within 30 to 90 miles of New York, Boston and Philadelphia.

“Everyone in the Northeast has heeded the lessons of Hurricane Sandy and Xand is stepping up to the table as well,” said Mishra. “We’ve seen a strong market demand for disaster recovery solutions, housed not just in secure facilities, but also on our cloud platform. The timing is perfect right now for more expansion to meet this increased customer demand.”

Xand’s disaster recovery offerings include replication, online vaulting and electronic backups and cloud recovery, as well as traditional tape, physical asset recovery, shared and dedicated workspace and other custom designed applications. In 2011, Xand was acquired by private equity firm ABRY Partners to grow its footprint and market presence.

Nicole Henderson at theWHIR notes a few other post-Hurricane Sandy disaster recovery moves: Nirvanix offered a “Disaster Avoidance Program” to move customers away from its data center in New Jersey before the storm hit, while Advanced Internet Technologies offered a free month of hosting to any company that experienced downtime or data loss with any other web host caused by Hurricane Sandy.