Iron Mountain To Buy E-Discovery Services Company Stratify

Iron Mountain on Wednesday said it has agreed to acquire Stratify for $158 million in cash, and combine the company's litigation-focused electronic discovery services with Iron Mountain's data protection and records management offerings.

The acquisition, expected to close by the end of the year, would expand Iron Mountain's services for the legal market, enabling it to offer software and services that cover discovery and data investigations, compliance and associated records management, and litigation matters.

Stratify is a privately held Mountain View, Calif., company that offers software and services that organizations use in gathering discovery-related electronic information, whether in Microsoft Office documents, PDF files, or e-mail. Discovery is the process of gathering data requested by the opposing side of litigation. Stratify's software, however, also is used in investigative and regulatory matters.

Iron Mountain, a Boston-based company with revenue of $2.4 billion last year, offers products for data protection, records management, and disaster recovery back-up services. The company already has a sizable business in the legal market, so the Stratify offerings would augment Iron Mountain's existing portfolio. For Stratify, the acquisition provides a larger sales and distribution operation.

Iron Mountain plans to operate Stratify as a division that would continue to sell e-discovery products, which are used by a number of large companies. Stratify says its software can reduce expenses for law firms and corporations by providing lawyers with a single review application for scanned paper and native electronic documents. In addition, the software manages documents through the entire discovery life cycle.

The latest acquisition is the second announced by Iron Mountain this month. The company expanded its presence in the health-care sector through the purchase of RMS Services, which generated $27 million in sales last year. Financial terms weren't disclosed.

RMS is a records and file-room management services company that helps health-care providers convert records to electronic format and then store them. The health-care industry is gradually trading in paper-based medical records for electronic systems, creating a huge sales opportunity for records management companies.