HDS Pushes Iceland Archive

Could Iceland be the next big thing in archiving? HDS seems to think so. It's signed a partnership with Icelandic firm Data slandia to offer what it claims is the world's most environmentally friendly archiving service.

Although better known for geysers, fishing, and its bizarre volcanic landscape, the remote North Atlantic island is the ideal location for U.S. and U.K. firm to outsource their archived data, according to Sol Squire, Data Íslandia's chief business development officer. "We have a geographic mid-point between the U.S. and Europe, sharing a common business day," he says. "It's very different to how someone would deal with someone in India or China."

Located around 180 miles from Greenland and 600 miles from mainland Europe, Iceland is just five hours ahead of the U.S. East Coast and in the same time zone as the U.K.

HDS's services wing will now start selling Iceland as an archiving destination, touting the island's "green" power infrastructure and cheap energy and telecommunications as incentives for firms to send their data to the edge of the Arctic circle.

Although he would not divulge any customer names, Squire confirmed that Data Íslandia is already archiving data for a number of Nordic governments, five "major multinational" firms, and NGOs in both the U.S. and the U.K, which is currently in the throes of its own data security scandal.