Los Angeles Dodgers turn to the cloud for email archiving and data storage

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

While the Los Angeles Dodgers' front office made a few moves at the July 31 trade deadline, their IT department has made its own significant upgrade. Recently, IT representatives from the team stated they have begun to outsource some daily responsibilities, using a cloud computing offering for email archiving and data storage.

Currently, the IT department supports 300 users across four offices located in the U.S. and Asia. Needing to make sure all of these employees would not be affected by data loss, the department turned toward the cloud.

"We are in the middle of an earthquake zone and work in a 50-year-old building," said Ralph Esquibel, director of technology for the Dodgers, who play just outside of downtown LA. "Having a disaster recovery and business continuity solution in place is essential. I was a little bit hesitant at first to outsource any type of computing, but I quickly learned that it is a definite value-add. We have a very small IT team, and outsourcing has worked out well for us. It's very easy to use and saves us a lot of time."

Esquibel initially looked at local appliances as archiving solutions, however, he ultimately determined there was no benefit to archiving locally rather than on a managed network.

Like the Dodgers, many companies in natural disaster-prone areas are turning to cloud computing for data backup. Companies in cities such as Miami, where hurricanes are frequent, are among those turning toward the cloud.