Where Does Iron Mountain Digital’s Future Lie?

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Barry Murphy. Published: 2011-04-28 13:37:49  Recently, Iron Mountain announced that it might sell of its digital business unit and focus on its traditional physical storage strengths.  Having watched Iron Mountain unfurl its transition into the digital world over the past decade, it’s not surprising that the company is retrenching.  It’s not easy for a large physical storage company to become a software company.  While many (myself included) thought that the Iron Mountain brand name might translate well into the digital world, ultimately, the company was not able to turn acquisitions of small digital businesses (Stratify and Mimosa Systems) into a viable digital competitor.In theory, the acquisitions and evolution of Iron Mountain digital should have worked.  Why didn’t it?  Hard to say, exactly, but I would speculate that Iron Mountain underestimated the difficulty of becoming an enterprise software vendor and ran out of runway because it needed to please too many stakeholders (many of whom did not like the drag trying to go digital was creating).  Many readers are asking us what to think of the Iron Mountain Digital business.In the long-term, the digital arm of Iron Mountain will be okay; some larger vendor will buy it.  Right now, I’ve heard Autonomy, Dell, EMC, HP, and IBM mentioned as potential landing spots.  And there could be more suitors.  Thus, current customers should not fret that the business will no longer exist.  The folks hurt most right now are Iron Mountain Digital prospects, who don’t want to choose the solution when it’s future is unclear.  The hope is that an acquisition will occur quickly.  The rumor mill is swirling that it could be as soon as 30-60 days.By publicly announcing an intention to sell, Iron Mountain could enhance a potential bidding war.  The Statify and Mimosa NearPoint businesses are decent ones that would truly enhance a large software vendor’s portfolio, especially since corporations are just starting to move up the eDiscovery learning curve.  Could the Stratify and Mimosa businesses be broken up and sold off separately?  Yes, but that would make less sense to me.  There is synergy between the Stratify eVantage offering and NearPoint.  And, the ability to offer both software and EDD services and hosting is compelling.We’re hoping something happens quickly so that prospects in limbo can make informed decisions.  What do you think will happen?