Business

Flow Jamaica yesterday unveiled its newest offering to the market - offshore data-storage service, in which its parent company Columbus Communications has invested over US$20 million in a regional project.

The data will be captured by Flow, but stored by E-Commerce Park in Curacao.

"We have a tier-three-ready data centre facility ... only one of its kind in the region, with 24-hour network operation access," said Michelle English, president and chief executive officer of Flow Jamaica.

The e-commerce data park facility is part of the broader network owned and operated by parent company Columbus Communications, whose fibre optic broadband network reaches 22 countries regionally.

The 30,000-square-foot facility provides specialised services for asset protection, and data residency solutions for disaster recovery and business continuity which includes rack and caged space for equipment, off-site data storage and full data replication.

"We have the means to do huge storage and the cost factor is based on what you need and use," said Andrew Fazio, director of sales, at the press announcement held at Flow's offices at the Courtleigh Corporate Centre in New Kingston.

"We also provide virtualisation where we can actually allow customers not to have to buy tier-two computers, but just set up on the equipment we have inside Curaçoa and that provides a very cost-effective way for companies to set up computers in the virtual world, depending on the application they are on and the amount of service they need to replicate."

Flow Jamaica hopes to sell the service to both large and small companies, saying for the latter "we can transport their data and take care of it in sort of a virtualised environment."

Flow Jamaica is marking four years of operation with product launches, including the data-storage service, and new cable packages such as Flow on Demand.

The company is also on a drive to go green, and has given customers the option of bill advisory and payments online with a J$250 rebate incentive to sign up.

sabrina.gordon@gleanerjm.com