New Iron Mountain Consulting Arm Combines Records Management and eDiscovery

Posted on Aug 5, 2010 in Records Management News

Exper­tise to Help Clients Cut Infor­ma­tion Costs and Risks
Multi-faceted Con­sult­ing Team Estab­lished to Address Full Spec­trum of Cus­tomers’ Infor­ma­tion Man­age­ment Needs

BOSTON (Aug. 4, 2010) – Iron Moun­tain Incor­po­rated (NYSE: IRM), the infor­ma­tion man­age­ment com­pany, today announced the for­ma­tion of a new con­sult­ing prac­tice, which com­bines the company’s long-established prac­tice in records and infor­ma­tion man­age­ment and its elec­tronic dis­cov­ery man­age­ment team. Iron Moun­tain Con­sult­ing advises cus­tomers around the world on how to lower the cost of man­ag­ing infor­ma­tion and records, meet com­plex indus­try reg­u­la­tions, pre­pare for eDis­cov­ery, man­age com­plex lit­i­ga­tion and avoid data or IT sys­tems dis­as­ters. By com­bin­ing its deep knowl­edge in hard­copy records, elec­tronic infor­ma­tion man­age­ment, lit­i­ga­tion readi­ness and legal process into one con­sult­ing prac­tice, Iron Moun­tain can bet­ter advise and offer cus­tomers inte­grated solu­tions for con­sis­tently man­ag­ing all of their infor­ma­tion with less cost, risk and complexity.

Iron Moun­tain Con­sult­ing lever­ages and extends the company’s expe­ri­ence in stor­ing and man­ag­ing data over the past 60 years. The new Iron Moun­tain Con­sult­ing prac­tice com­bines the company’s highly-regarded records and infor­ma­tion man­age­ment and eDis­cov­ery con­sult­ing teams — who have sep­a­rately and suc­cess­fully han­dled nearly 1,000 cus­tomer projects. Iron Moun­tain Con­sult­ing helps cus­tomers design, build and exe­cute legally-defensible, but prag­matic, records man­age­ment and reten­tion poli­cies and best prac­tices.
Iron Moun­tain Con­sult­ing pro­vides clients expert advice in the fol­low­ing areas:
Records Man­age­ment, includ­ing records clas­si­fi­ca­tion schema, reten­tion destruc­tion poli­cies and sched­ules, and com­pli­ance mon­i­tor­ing;
Infor­ma­tion Man­age­ment, includ­ing risk assess­ment, infor­ma­tion and sys­tems map­ping, and unstruc­tured (e.g., email) and struc­tured data man­age­ment strate­gies;
eDis­cov­ery Man­age­ment, includ­ing lit­i­ga­tion readi­ness plan­ning, com­plex mat­ter guid­ance, and dis­pute advi­sory ser­vices.
“Our cus­tomers want clear, con­sis­tent and cost-conscious guid­ance on how to cre­ate com­pli­ant records and infor­ma­tion pro­grams to com­bat their mount­ing data and sys­tems chal­lenges,” said Ramana Venkata, pres­i­dent of Iron Moun­tain Dig­i­tal. “Cus­tomers do not view their chal­lenges as dis­tinct paper and elec­tronic data chal­lenges, but rather as com­plex infor­ma­tion man­age­ment chal­lenges. For that rea­son, we’ve cre­ated a sin­gle inte­grated con­sult­ing orga­ni­za­tion to help address any chal­lenge our cus­tomers may face, regard­less of the for­mat, loca­tion or lan­guage of the under­ly­ing infor­ma­tion.”
“We engaged Iron Moun­tain Con­sult­ing to help us design records man­age­ment pro­grams and processes. We approached Iron Moun­tain because of their rec­og­nized exper­tise in the mar­ket, and they quickly earned our trust and respect with their advice and the results they pro­duced,” said Nicole Far­rar, senior cor­po­rate coun­sel with Wilbur-Ellis Com­pany. “Iron Moun­tain Consulting’s records man­age­ment pro­gram devel­op­ment was invalu­able to our com­pany as we estab­lished and imple­mented con­sis­tent records man­age­ment prac­tices that opti­mize the bal­ance between risk and cost across our orga­ni­za­tion.”
“More and more, com­pa­nies are being faced with com­plex infor­ma­tion man­age­ment chal­lenges,” said Vivian Tero, Pro­gram Man­ager, Com­pli­ance Infra­struc­ture Ser­vice, IDC. “Iron Mountain’s inte­grated con­sult­ing team can help com­pa­nies solve those issues by help­ing design, build and exe­cute records man­age­ment and reten­tion poli­cies.”
Stephen Whet­stone, Esq. and Thomas Bar­nett, Esq. will lead Iron Moun­tain Con­sult­ing. Bar­nett, vice pres­i­dent of Iron Moun­tain Con­sult­ing, will over­see the con­sult­ing prac­tice and man­age the team. Before join­ing Iron Moun­tain, Bar­nett was a spe­cial coun­sel in the lit­i­ga­tion depart­ment of Sul­li­van & Cromwell, where he cre­ated and led its elec­tronic dis­cov­ery and com­pli­ance group. Addi­tion­ally, he helped develop the orig­i­nal Sedona Prin­ci­ples on eDis­cov­ery and the Elec­tronic Dis­cov­ery Ref­er­ence Model (EDRM), and served as a secu­ri­ties and cor­po­rate gov­er­nance lit­i­ga­tor at Wil­son Son­sini Goodrich & Rosati.
Whet­stone will have ulti­mate respon­si­bil­ity for the con­sult­ing team in addi­tion to other com­pany strate­gic ini­tia­tives. He is cur­rently the vice pres­i­dent of client devel­op­ment and strat­egy, and joined Iron Moun­tain through Strat­ify in early 2005, after 13 years of prac­tice at AmLaw 50 firms, first as a lit­i­ga­tion asso­ciate at Skad­den Arps, and then as a lit­i­ga­tion asso­ciate and part­ner at Testa Hur­witz.
The con­sult­ing team is com­prised of 70 infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy and records man­age­ment pro­fes­sion­als, includ­ing senior attor­neys and pubic com­pany coun­sel, com­puter sci­en­tists, elec­tri­cal engi­neers, lin­guists and library and infor­ma­tion sci­en­tists, and pro­fes­sional project man­agers.
For more infor­ma­tion about Iron Moun­tain Con­sult­ing, please visit www.ironmountain.com/consulting
About Iron Moun­tain
Iron Moun­tain Incor­po­rated (NYSE: IRM) pro­vides infor­ma­tion man­age­ment ser­vices that help orga­ni­za­tions lower the costs, risks and inef­fi­cien­cies of man­ag­ing their phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal data. The company’s solu­tions enable cus­tomers to pro­tect and bet­ter use their information—regardless of its for­mat, loca­tion or life­cy­cle stage—so they can opti­mize their busi­ness and ensure proper recov­ery, com­pli­ance and dis­cov­ery. Founded in 1951, Iron Moun­tain man­ages bil­lions of infor­ma­tion assets, includ­ing busi­ness records, elec­tronic files, med­ical data, emails and more for orga­ni­za­tions around the world. Visit www.ironmountain.com or fol­low the com­pany on Twit­ter www.twitter.com/IronMountainInc for more information.

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