Leveraging its base

Since its founding in 1951, Iron Mountain has been well-known as a records and information management provider, but the company has extended its expertise in information management and data security to information technology (IT) more recently.

By acquiring Regency Technologies earlier this year, Iron Mountain expanded its IT Asset Lifecycle Management (ALM) business unit, which was formed in 2022 with its purchase of Newark, California-based ITRenew, an IT asset disposition (ITAD) services provider focused on maximizing the lifetime value of data center servers through asset disposition, recycling and remarketing.

These moves have enabled Iron Mountain, headquartered in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to build on its extensive logistics network to enhance environmental sustainability and increase value recovery at the end of the IT asset life cycle for its clients.

Bringing more capabilities in-house

Mark Kidd, executive vice president and general manager of the Iron Mountain Data Centers and ALM business units, says its ALM services grew out of its management of data backup tapes.

Iron Mountain saw its clients were moving away from paper records to digital solutions, necessitating the company to broaden its service offering. Kidd says Iron Mountain knew it excelled at securely collecting sensitive information and had the trucks to do so, which is where it focused originally as it moved to broaden its service offering to accept IT assets for disposition.

Initially, Iron Mountain contracted with companies that delivered the actual services. However, at the end of the last decade, he says it became clear this was a market that had opportunities around the world and customers were demanding these services. “We saw an opportunity to harness that front-end logistical trust element of the business and bring that to our customers on a broader scale.”

That understanding led Iron Mountain to build out its services around data center decommissioning, ITAD and workplace IT asset management, establishing its ALM business, which is divided into three verticals: hyperscale, enterprise and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

The acquisition of ITRenew helped Iron Mountain accelerate its growth in the data center sector, providing on-site and decommissioning services to those clients. “We actually have employees in the customers’ data centers permanently on service contracts,” Kidd says, adding that they are helping clients optimize technology throughout its life cycle.

“However … a lot of what we’ve been doing in terms of back-end processing on the enterprise side of the business was with third parties.”

Earlier this decade, the company decided it should bring those competencies in-house in core markets. “And that’s what led us to the Regency acquisition this past year in terms of really accelerating and building out that capability,” Kidd says.

With the acquisition of Stow, Ohio-based Regency Technologies, Iron Mountain can offer equipment refurbishing, device remarketing through retail channels and “really derive value from scrap and take that to a whole other level,” he adds. “Those are competencies that we really wanted to make sure that we had in-house.”

Regency’s process-driven approach appealed to Iron Mountain, which also is a process-driven company. “The idea of taking their principles and practices that were much a complement to what we had to be able to accelerate further the downstream elements of the process was super important,” Kidd says.

In addition to allowing Iron Mountain to realize more value for its customers, bringing its ALM services offering in-house creates a “very strong narrative” from the security of the data, regardless of location or device type, all the way through the environmental fidelity of that equipment. “For me, actually being able to trace things all the way to end of life and potentially, effectively, reuse, I think is compelling,” Kidd says.

Regency Technologies processed more than 50,000 metric tons in 2022 across its eight U.S. locations in Stow; Austell, Georgia; Brooksville, Florida; Chicago; Grand Prairie, Texas; Olympia, Washington; Phoenix; and Durham, North Carolina, and resold more than 2 million units. The company’s locations are R2, Recycling Industry Operating Standard (RIOS) and ISO 14001 certified, and its clients include Fortune 500 corporations, government agencies, defense contractors and educational institutions throughout the U.S.

With the addition of Regency’s eight locations, Iron Mountain has 12 locations that provide ALM services in the U.S.; three that serve Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA); and two that serve the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.

Kidd says Iron Mountain’s 12 U.S. processing sites give it comprehensive national coverage, allowing the company to reduce the costs and carbon impact associated with transporting its clients’ decommissioned IT assets.

Given Iron Mountain’s scope, serving 95 percent of Fortune 1000 companies, it uses a network of service providers around the world to deliver its ALM services. That network includes four locations in the United States, six in Canada, 11 in Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru), 13 in the EMEA region (the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, Northern Ireland, Poland, Spain, Sweden, South Africa and United Arab Emirates) and 22 in the APAC region (Australia, New Zealand, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam).

According to its 2022 ALM sustainability report, Iron Mountain received and processed 16.18 million assets that year, weighing more than 36 million pounds. That included sanitizing 3.4 million hard disk and solid-state drives and processing 765,300 servers.

More acquisitions in the ITAD space could be in the future for Iron Mountain, Kidd says, adding, “We’ll certainly be on the lookout … whether it be select capabilities or select locations that could get us faster to helping our customers.”

Leaving a smaller footprint

Iron Mountain’s added capabilities in refurbishment and remarketing through the Regency purchase will benefit its clients in two important ways, Kidd says.

“One is when we think about reducing carbon footprint, anything that’s resold is always better off than anything that goes to the scrap pile,” he continues. “I think we have the ability to influence where things are going much more. And, from a customer perspective, carbon reporting [and] circularity, these are huge points, which, in some ways, they’re less about the money but more about what’s actually happening [with the devices].”

Iron Mountain’s goal is to optimize reuse while protecting information, which Kidd refers to as “job No. 1.”

He adds that maximizing product reuse is crucial because it is more economical and also opens up product categories to people who otherwise would not have access. “This isn’t easy to do because supply chains don’t holistically have circularity built in,” he says. “We need to create markets for items for reuse.

“And, finally, we must be very careful to look at how we can find the best home for all e-waste and scrap in the most environmentally friendly manner. Sustainable e-waste management is a critical component if we are to minimize the amount of waste from electronic goods and devices going to landfill. As our customers’ interest in circular economy and sustainability strategies continues to grow, they turn to us for guidance. Through our extensive partnerships with industry bodies, we harness a diverse range of expertise and resources, enabling us to deliver customized solutions that precisely align with their unique needs and objectives.”

To help its clients measure and communicate progress toward their sustainability commitments, Iron Mountain’s ALM division developed an Environmental Benefits Report that helps quantify their progress in diverting end-of-life electronics from landfills and reducing their greenhouse gas emissions.

Iron Mountain uses a methodology backed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to help determine if its offerings can be considered a “sustainable solution” for its customers, Kidd says. It evaluates offerings based on how they address environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) needs; if they are supported by transparent analysis across the product life cycle; are the subject of endorsement or collaboration with a credible external organization; and if the product marketing accurately represents ESG claims and risks.

The company also participates in the Circular Electronics Partnership, which seeks to alleviate industrywide barriers for firms transitioning to circularity, and has set a variety of sustainability goals it is tracking its progress on.

Kidd says many parallels exist between Iron Mountain’s data center and ALM business units. “We are focused on a core value proposition of security and compliance with our enterprise and hyperscale customers,” he says. “There is an opportunity to extend our environmental stance to be looking at the reverse supply chain from reuse of devices all the way back to the creation of reusable metals, plastics and rare earth elements.”

Challenges and opportunities ahead

Iron Mountain is seeing strong demand for its ALM services from customers across all sectors, Kidd says, with pricing for electronic components rising since late 2023.

This positive momentum builds off the opportunities the pandemic presented. “As organizations rushed to equip their employees for remote work at the onset of the pandemic, even the most advanced ones encountered challenges in effectively managing and recovering these remote devices,” he says. “Now, as many of these hastily deployed assets near their end-of-life stage, our Workplace IT Asset Management services are assisting our customers in efficiently tracking, recovering, refreshing, securely disposing or returning them to leasing organizations in a manner that is both safe and secure.

"Sitting here with the resources we have as a company, I get very excited about creating a multinational, global story about what’s possible in this industry, from information security all the way through what are we doing environmentally.”

The author is editorial director of the Recycling Today Media Group and can be reached at dtoto@gie.net.