Storage Toolkit

Nuclear shelter turns to email

Ed Frauenheim CNET News.com

Published: 01 Jun 2004 12:00 BST

Richard Reese has plenty of experience managing paper records, and he's trying to bring that know-how to keeping track of electrons.

For more than 20 years, Reese has been chief executive of Iron Mountain, a company that began in 1951 to store corporate records in case of nuclear war. Iron Mountain created a records-storage centre at a depleted iron ore mine in New York, hence the company name.

Since 2001, though, Iron Mountain has been pushing to store and manage customer records on computer gear as well. The company has invested more than $50m (£27.1m) in a "digital archives" business, designed to help clients comply with new data-handling regulations.

The Internet-based service aims to consolidate electronic records, such as emails, images and electronic statements, into an archive for quick and easy searches and retrievals. In addition, Iron Mountain offers to back up customers' data from server computers and PCs in case of a disaster.

The company has teamed up with storage titan EMC to offer email-archiving products for securities firms and brokerages. Still, Reese is up against some stiff competition in his quest to marry the physical and electronic worlds. Data storage specialists such as IBM, Network Appliance, Veritas Software and Zantaz are also gunning to help customers comply with regulations and protect data.

But Reese claims that his old-economy company is well-suited to help clients in the newer digital world. After all, Iron Mountain has turned to technology to help it manage millions of boxes of records in the material world. "We have been big database operators for a long time," he said. "And we build most of that technology ourselves."

ZDNet UK sister site CNET News.com recently spoke with Reese about Iron Mountain's digital-records strategy and how lessons from the physical arena are being applied to the electronic realm.

Q: Why should companies trust you with all this technology, in terms of electronic records, when you are pretty new to the technology field?
A: For a couple of reasons. The first is the word you used: trust. We store more data for more companies, more organisations than anybody in the world. And we have built a reputation [of] being trusted to protect and manage that data.

I will not use names, but there are plenty of technology companies that I can guarantee customers would not trust to store the data. Beyond trust, you have got to know what you are talking about. We recruited a very good staff.

We have been big database operators for a long time, and we build most of that technology ourselves. So we have a total information technology staff of more than 300 people and spend a total of about $1m a year on IT. Technology has always been an important part of our business strategy. We run in many decentralised sites throughout the world. Without technology gluing it all together, managing the business would be impossible.