Press Releases

Iron Mountain to acquire LiveVault corporation

~ Acquisition catapults Iron Mountain to the top of the online backup and recovery market ~

December 7, 2005 - Iron Mountain, the leader in records management and data protection services, has acquired US-based online backup and recovery specialist, LiveVault Corporation. LiveVault is a leading provider of disk-based online server backup and recovery solutions for small and mid-size businesses and for corporations with remote offices The acquisition strengthens Iron Mountain's portfolio of technology solutions and makes it the largest provider of online backup and recovery services for PC and servers.

The acquisition follows a five-year partnership between the two companies in which Iron Mountain offered its customers Server Electronic Vaulting services via LiveVault. Currently, more than 2,000 corporate customers use the LiveVault technology to protect their servers.

"Joining forces with LiveVault is a natural move for Iron Mountain that extends our leadership role in the protection of our customers' business data," said Hartmut Wagner, Managing Director of Iron Mountain's Digital business unit in Europe. "The demand for online server backup and recovery has increased dramatically, so it's important for us to own the technology and intellectual property that fuels our ability to provide the best and most comprehensive backup and recovery solutions to the marketplace."

Following last year's acquisition of Connected Corporation, the global leader in backup and recovery solutions for PC data, this latest acquisition demonstrates Iron Mountain's continued commitment to solving the distributed data protection challenge.

John Clancy, executive vice president of Iron Mountain's Digital business unit commented, "Information outside of traditional datacenters is often overlooked and under-protected, leaving many companies - particularly small and medium-size businesses - highly vulnerable to data loss and disaster. By offering backup and recovery software as a service, we're helping companies address this issue head-on, efficiently and cost-effectively."

Bob Cramer, CEO of LiveVault, added, "We've had a very close and successful relationship with Iron Mountain for many years, and I can't think of a better, more natural strategic partner. We're very excited to bring these teams together and to integrate the award-winning LiveVault technology into a comprehensive suite of solutions for data protection. This is a win-win for our partners, customers and employees."

Commenting on the acquisition, Steve Duplessie founder and senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc said: "The acquisition of LiveVault is just another step along the way to Iron Mountain dominating the digital records management and protection business as it has the physical information business. I suspect you'll see Iron Mountain continue to add technologies and companies that help them accelerate their plan to be the one-stop-shop for all external information protection and archiving, be that paper, tapes, or electronic. If anyone has the customer mindshare and trust to pull this off, it is Iron Mountain".

Doug Chandler, program director, Storage Software, Services and Compliance Infrastructure Research, IDC said "Iron Mountain has been moving aggressively to help its customers manage and protect all of their information, both physical and digital. Our research shows that distributed data represents a special challenge regarding management and protection. With the addition of LiveVault, Iron Mountain now has both remote-server-based and PC-based data covered."

Iron Mountain currently provides tens of thousands of corporate customers and SMEs with data protection and archiving services. Iron Mountain's comprehensive data protection and e-records management solution suite includes award-winning Electronic Vaulting software and managed online data backup and recovery services for protecting at-risk, distributed data stored on PCs and remote servers, including market-leading Connected DataProtector/PC™ and Server Electronic Vaulting (powered by LiveVault technology).

Iron Mountain has been an investor in LiveVault since 2000 and currently owns nearly 14 percent of the company. Iron Mountain will pay approximately $42 million for the remaining share of LiveVault, valuing the deal at $50 million. This transaction is expected to close within a few days and additional information regarding this acquisition will be provided during the Company's 8th Annual Investor Day on December 7, 2005.