Restoration Assurance Program From Iron Mountain and Trusted Data Solutions

Iron Mountain Inc. and Trusted Data Solutions, LLC (TDS), in backup and conversion, announced Iron Mountain’s Restoration Assurance Program, a joint managed service solution to retrieve information from all backup systems and tape formats.

Litigation is increasing and regulatory compliance is getting tighter. Data requests to support eDiscovery media can come in to an IT organization from many departments such as legal, compliance and line of business. This information frequently resides on legacy media. Though necessary, time spent retrieving that information takes away from other core IT responsibilities, and especially in the case of legal and regulatory events, can seriously disrupt IT budgets and planning.

“This is an exciting offering for us in that it allows us to respond to a customer need that was going unmet. We found that customers were keeping older tape systems alive just so they could occasionally retrieve data from those older media formats, but now we can give customers the peace of mind of knowing that data from previous formats of backup media can easily be accessed and restored on demand when needed,” said Eileen Sweeney, SVP and GM of data management, Iron Mountain. “There are specialized forensic tools that can be used to retrieve data from damaged or obsolete media, but most IT teams don’t have these tools or the desire to use them.“

Customized to individual customer requirements, Restoration Assurance Program guarantees restoration capability of information from all tape formats and systems, allowing IT professionals to have fast access to all of their data that resides on tape, while at the same time allowing them to decommission their legacy tape infrastructure. This enables companies to respond to eDiscovery events or support compliance substantiation faster, more predictably and more cost effectively than ever before, which is a key requirement for legal, compliance and business units alike. Additionally, decommissioning older tape assets in tandem will help customers save time, energy and resources, reducing hard IT costs.

“We have enjoyed a successful partnership with Iron Mountain for over a decade, and we’re very excited to build on that partnership to offer the Restoration Assurance Program to their world-wide customer base,” said Chris Clark, president, TDS. “This program can help every single Iron Mountain Data Management customer by relieving the burden and complexities of managing its legacy data environments and giving them more flexibility to adapt to continually evolving future backup strategies and methods.“

“IT teams continue to evolve their data protection solutions to accommodate their ever-changing production infrastructure, but most organizations have to retain data far longer than the typical lifecycle of their data protection product(s),” said Jason Buffington, senior data protection analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “Add increased litigation and regulatory requirements to the operational challenges of maintaining older backup solutions and tape inventories, and it is no wonder that many organizations are looking for smarter ways to manage their long-term data. Restoration Assurance Program takes these burdens away from the IT department while guaranteeing access to information contained on older tape systems.“