Iron Mountain to Acquire Stratify, Inc.
Acquisition Strengthens Iron Mountain Digital's eDiscovery and Investigation Services
BOSTON and MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Oct. 31 -- Iron Mountain Incorporated (NYSE:IRM), the global leader in information protection and storage services, today announced the signing of a definitive agreement to acquire Stratify, Inc. for approximately $158 million in cash. Stratify, a leader in advanced electronic discovery services for the legal market, offers in-depth discovery and data investigation solutions for AmLaw 200 law firms and leading Fortune 500 corporations. With this acquisition, Iron Mountain augments its suite of eDiscovery services, providing businesses with a complete, end-to-end Discovery Services solution that efficiently manages paper and digital information for discovery and data investigations, compliance and associated records management, and litigation matters.
"With today's increased litigation and regulatory investigations, businesses are facing significant pains associated with the growing cost and complexity of discovery across tremendous volumes of discoverable information," said John Clancy, president of Iron Mountain Digital, the technology arm of Iron Mountain. "In order to help meet our customers' needs in this area, we began an exhaustive search for the leading provider of electronic discovery and investigation services. We formed a partnership with Stratify that has since evolved into a natural extension of the Iron Mountain Digital portfolio."
Clancy continued, "Stratify provides the most intuitive, advanced and efficient electronic discovery and data investigation services on the market today. By combining Stratify's advanced electronic discovery and investigation capabilities with Iron Mountain's data protection and records management solutions, we're providing our customers with the ability to meet their discovery requirements better, faster and more cost-effectively."
As the risks and volume of litigation and regulatory investigations continue to grow, so do the complexities associated with managing the exponential growth of information. In acquiring Stratify, Iron Mountain expands its core data protection and management capabilities by integrating Stratify's advanced service offerings that address discovery issues for both paper and digital records. The acquisition enables Iron Mountain to directly help businesses minimize the risks of eDiscovery by simplifying the electronic discovery process to facilitate a secure chain of custody, increasing the accuracy and consistency of review, and enabling attorneys to easily identify and protect privileged documents during review.
"The electronic discovery process puts a tremendous strain on organizations, particularly for legal, compliance and IT departments, due to the huge volumes of information that must be searched and the demanding deadlines of the legal system," noted Brian Babineau, senior analyst of Enterprise Strategy Group. "This acquisition is a logical step for Iron Mountain, a service provider already known for cost-efficient information storage and management solutions. Our research shows that nearly 40% of North American corporate counsels expect electronic discovery spending to remain flat next year. The only way this is feasible is for organizations to work with partners like Iron Mountain that provide a single point of control that dramatically increases the speed at which data is retrieved, restored, organized, indexed and ready for review."
As a division of Iron Mountain Digital, Stratify will continue to provide its market-leading electronic discovery services and software to AmLaw 200, Fortune 500 and other firms for investigative, regulatory and litigation matters, augmented by Iron Mountain's scale and distribution. In addition, Iron Mountain customers will now be able to maximize their investment in Iron Mountain Digital's storage and data protection solutions by leveraging the capabilities of Stratify's solution integrated as a value-added service.
The Stratify Legal Discovery(TM) service enables organizations to drive down the Total Cost of Review by providing in-house and outside counsel with a comprehensive, easy-to-use, high-productivity review and analysis solution. Stratify has consistently pioneered new electronic discovery capabilities including concept-based review, near-duplicate detection and visual email analytics that enable customers to achieve review rates that are significantly higher than in-house systems and other online review systems. The Stratify Legal Discovery service provides attorneys a single review application for scanned paper and native electronic documents, securely managing documents through the entire discovery lifecycle. Stratify's complete feature support for European and complex, multi-byte languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean removes all barriers to in-depth eDiscovery for corporations active in today's expanding global economy.
"Joining the Iron Mountain Digital family represents the next evolutionary development for Stratify's electronic discovery and information management solutions and business," said Ramana Venkata, CEO and founder of Stratify. "Integrating our advanced electronic discovery and data investigation capabilities with the industry leading data protection and records management provider is critically important to cater to the critical needs of customers who face increasing regulatory and legal discovery obligations and rapidly rising costs. With Stratify, Iron Mountain is now the only company that can collect, protect and store an organization's information, consolidate matter- specific information from external parties, and deliver high-productivity results through people, process and unique underlying technology to handle investigations and discovery requirements quickly and cost-effectively."
The acquisition is subject to regulatory review and customary closing conditions and is expected to close by the end of the year. Additional information regarding this transaction will be provided during the Company's third quarter earnings call scheduled for 11:00AM ET today.
About Stratify, Inc.
Stratify is one of the largest electronic discovery solution providers and serves many of the AmLaw 200 and leading Fortune 500 corporations. Founded in September 1999, Stratify is a privately held company that has received funding from Mobius Venture Capital and In-Q-Tel, the strategic investment firm of the U.S. Intelligence Community. Stratify is headquartered in Mountain View, California. For more information about Stratify, please visit stratify.com.
About Iron Mountain Digital
Iron Mountain Digital is the world's leading provider of software- and storage-as-a service solutions for backup and archiving. The technology arm of Iron Mountain Incorporated offers a comprehensive suite of data protection and archiving solutions to thousands of companies around the world, directly and through a world-wide network of channel partners. Iron Mountain Digital is based in Southborough, Mass. with European headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany.
About Iron Mountain
Iron Mountain Incorporated (NYSE:IRM) helps organizations around the world reduce the costs and risks associated with information protection and storage. The Company offers comprehensive records management and data protection solutions, along with the expertise and experience to address complex information challenges such as rising storage costs, litigation, regulatory compliance and disaster recovery. Founded in 1951, Iron Mountain is a trusted partner to more than 100,000 corporate clients throughout North America, Europe, Latin American and Asia Pacific. For more information, visit the Company's Web site at www.ironmountain.com.
Media Contact:
Laura Sudnik
Senior Public Relations Manager
laura.sudnik@ironmountain.com
(508) 808-7528
of Iron Mountain Incorporated
FCMN Contact: laura.sudnik@ironmountain.com
Source: Iron Mountain Incorporated
Web site: www.ironmountain.com/
http://stratify.com/
