promising a secure line of business By Henry Adderley Chief Reporter A team of four Bermudian businessmen has set up a local technology company to compete in the rapidly developing world of Information Technology (IT), e-Business and e-Commerce.

Chief Executive Officer Troy Symonds told The Royal Gazette yesterday that Fort Knox Bermuda Limited would initially focus on the four areas of document storage and imaging, facilities management and disaster recovery.

This focus on "the security of information'' will range from "hard paper documents right to data warehousing'' and Fort Knox will market itself to local and overseas companies, he added. One of the key services the company offers is disaster recovery, or business continuity management, said Mr.

Symonds.

"Business continuity management has become an essential strategic philosophy in today's highly interdependent business world,'' he said.

"Companies need to understand and prepare for all potential disruptions to their critical business processes.

"Fort Knox Bermuda has the business continuity management expertise to help you plan to stay in business even when disaster strikes. This entails prevention of data and other information loss, recovery of business processes and their support functions and temporary relocation of staff and resources to an alternative site.'' Mr. Symonds noted that if a company's computer data was corrupted or if its building burned down, for example, "what will it do following that?''.

Fort Knox offers consultancy to determine a plan of action plus the facilities to allow the company to store the data they need to access in case of a disaster.

It also provides clients with the ability to relocate to working offices. Fort Knox Bermuda also offered facilities management services to help companies relocating to Bermuda to take advantage of its status as an offshore jurisdiction, continued Mr. Symonds.

These companies needed an efficient IT environment established by professionals who understood what was needed to maintain hardware, telecommunication links and applications, he said.

Fort Knox offers web service and mail service hosting plus backup facilities to these companies. Mr. Symonds said: "Bermuda will be viewed as one of those places where companies can house IT equipment with professionals who understand it.'' He pointed out that the US was looking at changing tax laws in relation to Internet transactions which would increase the interest in Bermuda as an offshore jurisdiction.

Mr. Symonds noted that besides a tax benefit, Bermuda also offered up-to-date Internet legislation with laws that made electronic information permissible in Court and allowed an IT professional residing overseas to work in a virtual manner from Bermuda.

For instance, an American company with a web presence can have that presence stationed at Fort Knox where it will be maintained by that company and be governed by Bermuda law while its staff actually work back in the US, said Mr.

Symonds.

Other services on offer from Fort Knox are hard document and data storage plus document imaging -- where paper documents can be transferred onto computer files.

"One CD-ROM can hold up to 20,000 sheets of office or legal sized paper,'' noted Mr. Symonds.

This will prove beneficial to companies with a lot of information on paper who want to make it computer-accessible because they are moving into an e-commerce environment or to make that information easier to handle, he pointed out.

Meanwhile Fort Knox Bermuda can also house hard documents, including paper, for extended periods of time because of its environmentally-controlled facility.