Iron Mountain Incorporated (NYSE: IRM) helps customers manage records, protect data, archive digital files, and discard documents securely. The lion's share of Iron Mountain's business is in storing and discarding physical paper documents. In effect, this means driving a van to the customer's location, filling it with documents in boxes that Iron Mountain has sold to its customers, driving them to a secure location for safekeeping and retrieval when the customer needs them. Companies need Iron Mountain's services because of compliance regulations - they need to keep information on file for a certain amount of time to protect against lawsuits, and proprietary information must be discarded securely when it is no longer needed. The company earned $3.01 billion in revenues and $222 million in net income in 2009.^[1]

The company has a diversified client base - it serves 97% of the Fortune 1000, and more than 93% of the FTSE 100 in some fashion.^[2] But while its client list is impressive, the company's clients keep many of their data management functions in-house, so Iron Mountain only controls 33% of the overall market. The company's digital segment represents less than 10% of it's revenues, but it is a key to the company's growth strategy as it looks to become a fully-integrated data services provider. This segment presents opportunities in cross-selling and up-selling to existing clients and earning more high margin, high-tech business in addition to the physical storage business.

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