They say there’s a will

Executives from Iron Mountain dropped by to tout the findings of a commissioned survey that quizzed some 100 IT executives about managing business records in a world where government regulations run amok and litigation discovery can make finding that needle in a haystack painfully expensive.

Executives from Iron Mountain  dropped by to tout the findings of a commissioned survey that quizzed some 100 IT executives about managing business records in a world where government regulations run amok and litigation discovery can make finding that needle in a haystack painfully expensive.

Yes, it’s self-serving – Iron Mountain sells records management services – but the results are interesting:

• Just about nine of every 10 execs copped to not having rolled out the tools needed to do records management right.

• More than half admitted they don’t evaluate their procedures regularly.

• And, not surprisingly, 44% plan to spend more on this stuff next year; 21% substantially more.

Of course, what people say they’re going to do and what they actually do often bear little resemblance, especially when time and money are involved.

For example, in those nightmarish weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, it became an article of faith in the industry that spending on disaster recovery and business continuity was about to go on a run reminiscent of generator and battery sales just before Y2K. . . . That sense of urgency dissipated rather quickly.

“The difference with business continuity is that I still don’t have to do it,” says Iron Mountain President Peter Delle Donne. “In the records management piece, litigation is just overwhelming companies on a daily basis.”

So, too, the weight of regulation.

“Sarbanes-Oxley is not going away,” says Ken Rubin, Iron Mountain’s executive vice president of marketing. “It is not a flash in the pan; it’s not a Y2K type of thing. This is going to have legs, and it’s just a question of when companies do [records management] right. They are already committed to it.”

Uh, about that Segway recall . . .

Our 2-year-old son Grant revels in announcing that it’s “dinnertime! dinnertime! dinnertime!” whenever he senses meal preparation has begun. What’s especially cute is that it makes no difference whether we’re nearing dinner, lunch or breakfast; it’s all dinnertime to him.

While Grant works on grasping such fine distinctions, his dad is trying to decide whether now is the right time for eating crow over previous columns extolling the virtues of Segway, inventor Dean Kamen’s much-ballyhooed scooter.

You might have heard that the government ordered Kamen’s company to recall every Segway sold. Something about people falling off when the battery gets low.

But that recall is not the source of my angst: There probably isn’t a car model on the road today that hasn’t had a recall, and the fact that people fall off scooters shouldn’t come as a shock.

The problem is that every Segway sold means only 6,000 of the things . . . since December 2001.

Some still insist it’s way too early to write off Segway. History is chock full of important technologies that took time to take off, they say.

True enough. But 6,000 scooters?

I hear Grant calling. It’s dinnertime, dinnertime, dinnertime: Pass the crow.

The Onion brings tears . . . again

Proving once more why it’s the funniest site on the ‘Net, here’s a bite from The Onion that had my eyes watering:

48-hour Internet outage plunges nation into productivity

BOSTON – An Internet worm that disabled networks across the U.S. Monday and Tuesday temporarily thrust the nation into its most severe maelstrom of productivity since 1992.

Writing to the columnist is always productive. The address is buzz@nww.com.