Providing a major boost to its online backup and recovery services portfolio, Iron Mountain Inc. on Thursday announced an agreement to purchase LiveVault Corp. for approximately $50 million in cash.
Prior to the acquisition, Iron Mountain had owned a 12 percent minority stake in LiveVault and therefore had to pay $42 million to fully acquire the company.
Iron Mountain will place Marlborough, Mass.-based LiveVaults technology under its new Digital Business unit, more specifically as part of its Data Protection arm also featuring its in-house-developed Digital Archive offering and technology resulting from Iron Mountains acquisition of Connected Corp. for $117 million in October 2004, said John Clancy, executive vice president of Boston-based Iron Mountain.
Clancy said he believes the integration between Iron Mountain and LiveVault should not be difficult because both companies have been close business partners for the last five years.
Over that time, Iron Mountain has come to offer Server Electronic Vaulting services through a licensing agreement with LiveVault.
In addition, Iron Mountain is LiveVaults largest sales channel.
A huge spike in interest by larger enterprise customers running remote and branch offices to accept backup as an outsourced service—beyond the SMB (small to midsize business) audience—sparked Iron Mountains interest to gain greater control over the technology, Clancy said.
“Its a good fit because we know each other so well; its a natural extension. Im a big believer the best acquisitions are the result of a successful partnership,” said Clancy, who came on board Iron Mountain as the CEO of Connected.
“[LiveVault] fits into the product strategy perfectly which is protecting distributed data….that was a flashpoint to build out the digital business within Iron Mountain.”
Now that his company is officially Iron Mountain property with newfound resources, Bob Kramer, CEO of LiveVault, said his organization has a full plate to expand its presence and growth.
The list includes: bringing LiveVaults online backup technology from the domestic market to worldwide customers via language extension capabilities, gaining support for new platforms such as HP-UX and IBM over current Microsoft Windows and Linux options, and integrating Connecteds data protection technology under a single view for both desktops and servers.
