Some firms may have resorted to offshoring their IT services to save money, but one US firm is aiming to give a whole new meaning to the term.

International Data Security (IDS) is looking to shake up the market with data storage facilities based on ships off the Californian coast.

Aimed at the Silicon Valley market, these servers are set to give other companies the ability to protect their business from suffering a long outage in the event of a natural disaster.

And with forest fires ravaging the state last year, coupled with the constant earthquake threat from the San Andreas Fault, companies in California have a substantial need to take disaster recovery precautions.

According to reports, the ships are set to work towards environmental targets by using the surrounding sea to reduce the heat of the servers, resulting in as much as a 40 per cent power use reduction.

This ties in with the recent trend towards eco-friendly IT measures in firms across the world, following research that highlighted the impact of IT systems on the environment rivals that of the airlines industry.