The good thing about computers is their versatility. The immense power of the hardware is available to complete any task as long as there is a software written for it. This feature of digital devices makes them fit for use in any industry anywhere in the world. Indeed, some of the fields such as nano-technology and genetics would simply be impossible without the silicon processors.
Information technology is used quite heavily in R&D companies, banks and financial institutions as well as the film and advertising industry. Since all their data resides on the hard drives of computers, its abrupt loss can have severe consequences for the continued existence of these companies.
R&D Companies
Research and development (R&D) companies are oriented toward generating intellectual property in terms of new breakthroughs that can result in new or better products or new way of doing things. Doing research is not an easy job. It is manpower-intensive. Hundreds and even thousands of engineers and scientists toil in laboratories for a number of years, trying to crack a problem or create something new.
The R&D effort may take many years to come up with anything concrete and usable in the market place. The data and results generated by R&D companies are worth their weight in gold for them. They represent solid investment in terms of money and man-hours, often running into millions of dollars.
Since computers are used widely in R&D work, the precious data derived from the process resides on hard disks located at the company premises. These disks can crash due to a number of reasons and make all the data disappear instantly. This is an absolute catastrophe for any R&D company because the labour of so many years goes down the drain. Such a loss usually results in massive financial setback. Many companies simply close down as they are unable to bear the consequences of such data loss. Others are forced to start all over again at a heavy cost, thus delaying their projects by years.
Banks and Financial Institutions
Banks and financial institutions typically service hundreds of thousands of customers. Individuals trust them with their hard-earned money while companies park millions of dollars in accounts with them from their sales turnover. The transactions conducted at these institutions involve a serious amount of money. The applications their computers run are termed mission-critical because the implications of their ever going down are ominous.
When data loss occurs at banks or financial institutions, customers suffer the most. All the records of their deposits, payments and transactions abruptly disappear. Unless they were keeping separate records of their dealings in their homes, they have no way to prove the amount of money owed to them by the commercial entity.
The massive data loss may also result in the collapse of the bank and the investors may lose all their savings and suffer massive damage. Companies which had their accounts with the collapsed bank may be forced to shut down operations too as they lose all their finances. Data loss at banks and financial institutions thus affects millions of people for no fault of theirs.
Film and Advertising Industry
Film and advertising industry is today booming all over the world as people choose to spend more on entertainment and leisure as a way to balance all the stress and anxiety of modern living. This industry too has taken to information technology in a big way in producing its goods.
Cameras now no longer store raw footage on reams of plastic films. Instead, they use hard drives as storage devices. The raw footage is edited at studios using computers and stored in digital devices such as hard disks and tape drives. Loss of such data can result in massive financial damage and even closure of the studios.
This is because movies require a huge amount of resources to be produced. They are shot outdoors at exotic locations and the entire crew – including the film stars – have to be paid. By the time the movie is finally canned, the producer has usually run a huge bill. Imagine if the final footage collected after a year of shooting abruptly disappears! Similarly, the advertisements too are produced at an enormous cost. Data loss is a very serious business in the film industry and there are many instances where it has resulted in the production house going bankrupt.
James Walsh is a freelance writer and copy editor. If you are concerned about data loss and would like more information on
Data Recovery see http://www.fields-data-recovery.co.uk
