Centralarm opens new disaster recovery center

BEDFORD, N.H.—Third party central monitoring center Centralarm is getting ready for the ribbon cutting at a brand new disaster recovery center based here. According to Centralarm president Kevin Helmig, the new 22-seat call center is the first step on a footprint-expansion path.

“We're adjacent to the Bedford Police/Fire Safety Complex. We stayed local for our second site so as to be able to quickly and easily allocate the required staff at both sites as needed,” Helmig said. "Future expansion will be the addition of other central station locations throughout the country for even further site diversification, backup and load balancing."

Centralarm currently monitors around 70,000 accounts across New England with some national accounts, as well.

Centralarm began rehabbing and updating the existing space back in December of 2010 and plans to begin operation by the end of May. Helmig said the new disaster recovery center has been designed to operate seamlessly under normal operating conditions as an extension of the company's primary facility in nearby Manchester, N.H. Should the primary facility become disabled for any disaster-related reason, the backup facility will be able to take over as an independent entity with all the functionality of the primary facility, Helmig said.

Helmig said the expense of bringing the new space up to spec was considerable. Renovations and updates included upgrading the interior partitions to meet necessary UL fire ratings, adding an FM-200 fire suppression system, adding updated security, fire, CCTV and access systems, and constructing a disaster-rated data vault that can withstand the building burning down around it as well as repel the water used to put the fire out without damaging the servers housed inside.

"We spared no expense in making sure it was done right with the very best technology available within the industry," Helmig told Security Systems News. "We have a tremendous responsibility to make sure every person we monitor for rests easy in the knowledge that we are there helping to protect them every minute of every day. Downtime is just not an option for us."