Iron Mountain Adding Data Centers

Iron Mountain (IRM) has opened a new data center in Toronto to support growth in its online backup services, Connected Backup and LiveVault. Connected provides automated backups for the desktop PC market, while LiveVault specializes in server backups. International growth and regulatory mandates on the location of data storage are driving an expansion of the data center network at Iron Mountain, which has long been a leading player in the market for paper document storage and backup tapes.

"In addition to opening the data center in Canada, Iron Mountain Digital is actively broadening its global data center presence and in the process of opening a series of data centers outside of the U.S. and Canada, to better support our customers wherever they do business," said John Clancy, president of Iron Mountain Digital, the technology arm of Iron Mountain. "We've had a growing demand from our customers worldwide for data protection solutions and services."

The data protection market is being driven by risks ranging from natural disasters to compliance requirements for corporate IT departments. Sometimes that data needs to be stored locally, according to Iron Mountain, which noted that British Columbia's Bill 73 mandates that governmental agencies in British Columbia must retain data in Canada. "With the addition of our first Canadian data centers, Canadian businesses now have the comfort of partnering with Iron Mountain to store and protect their data, while maintaining compliance with today's regulations," said Pierre Matteau, senior vice president of Iron Mountain Canada.

Iron Mountain is best known for its underground data storage facilities, which date to the Cold War and were initially designed to protect data in the event of a nuclear attack. The company's LiveVault is known for its videos featuring Monty Python alum John Cleese and the "Institute of Backup Trauma." Iron Mountain is based in Framingham, Mass. and has 310,000 customers worldwide.