The story
Founding and early years (1951–1970)
The company was started by Herman Knaust, who had made his fortune growing and marketing mushrooms. He purchased a depleted iron ore mine and 100 acres (0.40 km2) of land in Kingston, New York, for $9,000 in 1936. By 1950, the mushroom market had shifted, and Knaust was looking for alternative uses for his mine, which he had named "Iron Mountain." Knaust saw a business opportunity amidst widespread Cold War fears to protect corporate information from nuclear attack and other disasters.
The company was originally founded in 1951 as Iron Mountain Atomic Storage Corporation; it opened its first underground "vaults" in 1951 and its first sales office in the Empire State Building, about 125 miles (201 km) south. Iron Mountain's first customer was East River Savings Bank, which brought microfilm copies of deposit records and duplicate signature cards in armored cars for storage in the mountain facility.
Middle years (1970–2000)
This first iteration of Iron Mountain was bankrupt by the early 1970s and was wholly acquired by Vincent J. Ryan through his holdings in Schooner Capital Corporation, Boston, Massachusetts. At the time, it consisted of the original facility in Livingston, New York and IMAR (Iron Mountain at Rosendale), a former limestone mine and mushroom cave outside of Kingston, New York.
In 1978, the company opened its first above-ground records-storage facility. In 1980, it expanded to Rhode Island through the purchase of a former Industrial National Bank (a precursor to FleetBoston) cold site and data tape repository in Glocester, Rhode Island. It had many Fortune 500 clients at the time, and its revenue was in the $6 million range in the early 1980s.
In the mid-1980s, it convinced Manufacturers Hanover Bank to move all its paper records out of Manhattan to an above-ground facility, a former strip mall in Port Ewen, New York. This was the first time a records management company used barcodes to enable real-time access to shipped boxes and the documents inside.
During the 1980s, the company expanded beyond New York, opening facilities throughout New York and New England, and in 1988, extended its reach into 12 more U.S. markets by acquiring Bell & Howell Records Management, Inc. The firm went public on January 31, 1996. In 1997, Iron Mountain became a leading software escrow company with the acquisition of Data Securities International (DSI). In 1998, Iron Mountain made its first overseas acquisition by buying British Data Management, Ltd. The company reported a $423 million revenues by the end of the same fiscal year of its acquisition.
Expansion and consolidation (2000–present)
In February 2000, Iron Mountain Incorporated announced the completion of its acquisition of Pierce Leahy Corp. (NYSE:PLH) in a stock-for-stock merger valued at approximately $1.1 billion. In 2004, Iron Mountain formed a digital assets division called "Iron Mountain Digital", following the acquisition of Connected Corporation, a maker of online PC backup software. In 2005, Iron Mountain Digital bought LiveVault, a provider of online backup software for server data. In 2007 Iron Mountain acquired Stratify Inc., one of the larger e-discovery service providers at the production end of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM). The acquired businesses of LiveVault and Stratify Inc. were consolidated into Iron Mountain Digital. In 1981, Richard Reese became the company's CEO. In 1995, he concurrently assumed the position of chairman. He remained as CEO until June 2008, when he was replaced by Bob Brennan, but he remained in the chairman's seat. In April 2011, the company announced Brennan's departure, and Reese resumed his former title.
In February 2010, Iron Mountain acquired California-based eDiscovery and content archiving software provider, Mimosa Systems. The acquisition, too, was absorbed into Iron Mountain Digital. In May 2011, Iron Mountain divested Iron Mountain Digital, which was acquired by the British enterprise search and knowledge management firm Autonomy Corporation for $380 million. In August 2011, Hewlett-Packard acquired the Cambridge-based Autonomy, and amalgamated the operations of Autonomy (which included Iron Mountain Digital) into HP's enterprise software division. In May 2012, Iron Mountain expanded its high-security storage facility business through the acquisition of three records storage firms—File House Offsite Record Storage in Fredericksburg, Virginia; and Document Systems Inc. in Columbia, South Carolina; and First National Safe Deposit in Philadelphia. In November 2013, Iron Mountain announced it would be shutting down its Saint John, New Brunswick, contact center in 2014.
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As of January 1, 2014, Iron Mountain successfully converted to a real estate investment trust after approval of private letter ruling requests by the IRS to classify steel racking structures as qualified real estate assets.
At the end of April 2015, Iron Mountain announced it would acquire Australian data protection services provider Recall Holdings for around $2.2 billion in cash and stock. At the end of March 2016, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission released a statement saying it would not block the acquisition of Recall pursuant to Iron Mountain's agreement to divest most of its Australian business. At the same time, the Canadian Competition Bureau announced it entered an agreement with Iron Mountain to allow the acquisition as long as Iron Mountain divested records management assets in the markets in which it found the acquisition would limit effective remaining competitors: Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver.
The US Department of Justice agreed to allow the acquisition, provided that Iron Mountain divested records management assets in the 15 markets where Iron Mountain and Recall were two of the top three competitors. These markets include Detroit; Kansas City, Missouri; Charlotte, North Carolina; Durham, North Carolina; Raleigh, North Carolina; Buffalo, New York; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Pittsburgh; Greenville/Spartanburg, South Carolina; Nashville, Tennessee; San Antonio, Texas; Richmond, Virginia; San Diego; Atlanta; and Seattle.
The UK's Competition and Markets Authority approved the acquisition pending an investigation into the acquisition's effect on competition in the UK. In June 2016, the Competition and Markets Authority determined the acquisition would create a "substantial lessening of competition" in Aberdeen and Dundee. In response to this report, Iron Mountain and the Competition and Markets Authority reached an agreement whereby Iron Mountain would sell Recall's existing operations in Aberdeen and Dundee (known as C21 Data Services). On May 2, 2016, Iron Mountain announced the completion of the $2 billion (US) merger, mostly in stock.
In 2016, Fortune magazine listed Iron Mountain at number 729 on its list of the largest 1000 public companies in the United States. In September 2016, the unpublished recordings of musician Prince, consisting of over $200 million worth of recorded music and film, were moved to an Iron Mountain facility in Los Angeles, due to water damage and poor storage conditions in Prince's Paisley Park recording facility, in Chanhassen, Minnesota. In December 2017, the company purchased IO Data Centers' US division for $1.3 billion, which includes four colocation data centers in New Jersey, Ohio and two in Arizona. In February 2021, the company purchased Infofort, an information management solutions provider in the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey (MENAT) region. As of 2023, Iron Mountain's headquarters are located in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In 2024, Iron Mountain acquired IT asset disposition (ITAD) services provider Regency Technologies for $200 million.
From Wikipedia’s article on Iron Mountain (company), shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.6