Replacing a data backup tape system may not be an unusual accomplishment for a large city, but it is significant for a city the size of Corpus Christi, Texas, serving more than 282,000 residents, according to Michael Armstrong, CIO of Corpus Christi.

He said he slept better knowing his IT infrastructure recently began utilizing data deduplication technology, empowering the city to restore its data within 15 minutes after a failure, instead of waiting days. Data deduplication condenses data so that little space is needed to store it on backup tapes. The project reduced the 800 backup tapes previously required to store the city's data down to only 15.

Watch Video: Corpus Christi, Texas won a top Digital Cities award with a data backup tape system that emulates those of big cities.

The upgrade provided obvious disaster preparedness benefits.

"We're in a hurricane zone, so we always have that danger," Armstrong said.

He said the implementation was invisible to most government employees.

"It took us about six months. We had a [vendor] who worked with us. Most of our customers have no idea we even did anything," Armstrong said.

"We can do restores to accidentally deleted files within minutes," Armstrong said. "It takes a lot of the overhead off my staff."

He remarked that smaller cities still using antiquated backup technology did so at great risk to their governments and themselves.

"If you don't do it, you not only risk your data and the stability of your system, you also risk your career," said Armstrong.

Corpus Christi recently won a top award at the Center for Digital Government's Digital Cities Survey award ceremony in San Antonio, Texas. Armstrong attributed the win partially to his new data backup tape system.