Iron Mountain, the records storage firm, moved to strengthen its information management and archiving solutions by acquiring LiveVault, which addresses the small and mid-sized business market as well as remote offices of large organizations.

Already the owner of 14 percent of LiveVault, Iron Mountain said Thursday that it will pay an additional $42 million for the smaller firm, bringing the total cost of the acquisition to $50 million.

Noting that it has had a five-year business relationship with LiveVault, Iron Mountain said the latter firm has more than 2,000 corporate customers.

Iron Mountain said the deal makes it the largest provider of online backup and recovery services for PCs and servers. Last year, the company acquired Connected Corporation, which enhanced its market position in the distributed data protection segment.