Data Tree, a national provider of recorded property document images, announced that it has exceeded a 2 billion image collection milestone, making its database the largest of its kind in the world.

Data Tree LLC, a national provider of recorded property document images, announced that it has exceeded a 2 billion image collection milestone, making its database the largest of its kind in the world. The collection of property document images and ownership information in the 210 terabyte storage area network (SAN) powered by IBM products is so large that if all of the documents were laid out to form a continuous paper feed, they would extend from the earth to the moon and back, 12 times over.

Data Tree provides real estate information to more than 5,000 users who rely on its vast resources to make property-related decisions every day. Data Tree provides recorded document images, property ownership and sales history information in 31 states and 330 counties nationwide. Built with IBM TotalStorage FAStT 200 and FAStT 900 storage servers, customers can typically retrieve-in seconds-property reports and electronic images of publicly recorded deeds, mortgages, judgments, easements and maps using owner names and/or street addresses.

Delivering more than 2 million images per day, Data Tree's system is a reliable solution for businesses that perform land record searches, including title companies, abstractors, real estate attorneys, creditors, mortgage lenders, civil engineers and more.

The real estate information that Data Tree holds dates back as far as the 1950s. Managing the explosive growth has been one of the major challenges faced by Data Tree. The number of images that the company collects is growing so quickly that the storage capacity of the SAN has to scale approximately 1.5 terabytes each month to accommodate the image collection. The Data Tree image library, which is often leveraged in conjunction with other First American data sources to provide the most comprehensive real estate reports available, is backed by a state-of-the-art disaster recovery solution that asynchronously mirrors the 210 terabytes of data to a remote site in Dallas.

The SAN built upon IBM products at Data Tree helps the company manage two of the biggest challenges facing businesses of all sizes today - managing data growth and high availability. In addition to reliability, cost and technology leadership, Data Tree also chose IBM because they were looking for a partner who would team with them in building a SAN that would deliver improved utilization and management. The IBM FAStT Storage Servers are designed to provide high uptime and scalability.

Source: Data Tree, Sept. 21, 2004