Company Spotlight LiveVault (Iron Mountain)

The company has been diligently storing and protecting information for organizations since 1951, and their commitment towards digital data protection remains unwavering today. In 2004, they acquired Framingham, MA-based Connected Corporation, giving them an upper hand in automatic desktop and laptop data protection and recovery. In 2005, Iron Mountain acquired Marlborough, MA-based LiveVault Corporation and enhanced their server data protection and recovery solution.

David Asher, Director of Product Management for Data Protection Products, told Online Backup Reviews that Iron Mountain’s global brand, along with their well-established commitment to security, has added greatly to their acquired online backup product lines. Today, LiveVault protects over 3 Petabytes, or 3 quadrillion bytes of customer’s data, while Connected serves more than 2.5 million users worldwide.

“Connected and LiveVault both mesh nicely with Iron Mountain’s market position and overall strategy," Asher said. “It is clear to Iron Mountain that digital data protection and the digital direction is not just inevitable, it’s strategic and the way to go.”

Asher explained the differences between LiveVault and Connected, which together tackle a full gamut of online backup business needs. On the personal side of things, Connected works as a user-centric application that runs on PCs or laptops, automatically backing up computers as users go about their normal tasks. Whereas LiveVault is intended to be an IT administered model, managed through a Web interface and running on servers in a quiet, headless way.

Jackie Su, Iron Mountain’s Senior Product Marketing Manager, explained that although they don’t actively market to individual consumers, many small offices and personal users make use of Connected, either through Iron Mountain or through their many other partners and resellers.

Yet she explained Iron Mountain’s market objectives are clearly geared toward small to medium sized businesses and, most importantly, larger enterprises. Currently, she says there’s a huge uptake in their online backup products, especially from the enterprise sector looking for a large-scale, reliable solution. Connected can be widely deployed by any business, and LiveVault can easily be used to backup hundreds of servers in close proximity or thousands of miles away.

“When it comes to real enterprise protection of PCs, our enterprise customers tell us that we really are ‘the only game in town,’” Su said. “So far, no on can come even close to what we can offer with our patented technology.”

Su explained that, above all things, businesses and large enterprises look to Iron Mountain because of the solid security behind their solutions. In fact, Iron Mountain’s history is rooted in their ability to provide the utmost in data protection. Back in 1951 the company converted a depleted iron ore mine in upstate New York into the country’s first underground records storage center. The facility was designed to protect vital business records in the event of a nuclear holocaust.

Over the years, their emphasis on security hasn’t changed. Stephen Aldous, Product Manager for LiveVault, says their ability to keep digital data safely encrypted is a big reason why enterprises feel comfortable with them today. Aldous explained that LiveVault transmits data using 256-bit AES encryption, VPN tunneling and digital certificates. Backup data is then stored offsite in one of their highly secure underground facilities.

What customers truly appreciate, Aldous said, is the fact that businesses and enterprises maintain full control over their data’s safety. “Data is itself protected by an encryption key password that only the customer chooses,” Aldous said. “For customers that are really security conscious, they can even choose to not expose the encryption key password at all, so if they forget it’s irretrievable. So they can go as far as they like as far as security and encryption is concerned.” 

Although Iron Mountain is experiencing a significant growth in online backup among businesses, they’re aware that mainstream adoption is still yet to come. Asher explained that comfort levels are increasing, but the amount of businesses still using tape cartridge backup far outweighs that of online backup. Currently, bandwidth barriers and a general uncertainty regarding data transport across the Internet remains among the mainstream he said.

Yet, with more businesses and the mainstream public becoming more comfortable with online backup, the market is surely set to take off. Asher says that Iron Mountain sees huge potential in its popularity and will continue to nurture and solidify their online backup services and user base in the years to come.

“The online backup market is set to explode. However it’s still not close to mainstream adoption,” Asher said. “We find that our own sales competitors are not online backup providers but really tape backup companies, with businesses still reluctant to move to an online backup solution… and that’s where we’re trying to educate the market better as to how Iron Mountain is providing very secure facilities and how encryption technology works so they’ll be comfortable.”