Iron Mountain Case Study
Iron Mountain
Iron Mountain is a leading data center services provider with a need to support multiple access networks for its customers, making media conversion a key part of its service deployments. The company chose Transition Networks to facilitate standard, repeatable, consistent and secure network access across a magnitude of network infrastructures.
Customer Overview
For over 30 years, enterprises have trusted Iron Mountain to develop and manage their data center environments with a portfolio of ultra-secure facilities and compliant services. Iron Mountain’s facilities are service provider neutral and offer both retail colocation and wholesale data center leasing options. This solution leverages Iron Mountain’s 60+ year heritage of protecting what matters most to its customers by delivering the same high levels of security and compliance to its data center environments. The company’s flagship data center is located within a unique, 200-acre underground location outside Pittsburgh, PA, with additional data centers in Boston, MA and Kansas City, MO.
Customer Challenges
Iron Mountain stores critical financial, insurance, healthcare, government and other highly-regulated customer data in its facilities. So, the ability to provide standard, repeatable and consistent data center services that are also very secure and easy to manage is a top priority for the company as well as crucial for its customers. When it comes to interfacing with a customer’s preferred access network service provider, Iron Mountain maintains the widest possible support for any type of network, including T1, DS3, POTS & 10/100/1000 Ethernet over copper and fiber. As the data centers grew, the company’s strategic approach was to utilize a single media converter vendor for consistent and repeatable services with simplified management and inventory as well as to adopt the new ION Platform as part of its Data center design across their portfolio for data centers.
Customer Solution: Lantronix’s 19-slot ION Chassis with Management Module
Prior to implementing the Lantronix solution, Iron Mountain had been using four different vendors, each with different management and technical support methods. Iron Mountain’s Senior Manager of Data Center Infrastructure, Troy Hill, had a familiarity with Lantronix from a previous role where he had positive experiences with the company and was confident in its solutions. After learning of Lantronix’s solutions and how they worked, Hill selected the Lantronix’s Managed ION219-A, a 19-slot AC powered chassis.
When Iron Mountain onboards new customers, they each have different access network requirements, ranging from T1, DS3, POTS, 10/100/1000. These are all supported in copper-to-fiber cards for the ION219-A chassis. By placing these chassis in each meet-me room (MMR), every intermediate distribution area (IDA) and main distribution area (MDA) in their facility, Iron Mountain can provide low latency links between the MMR and the remote areas of their data centers. This allows Iron Mountain to accommodate customer needs quickly and simply by assigning a slot in the ION219 to the customer, and installing the appropriate converter card.
The Products
The ION219-x is an intelligent, high-density, multi-protocol system supporting a variety of network interface devices. The system is designed for both carrier class and enterprise network applications where multiple points of fiber integration and secure network management of the fiber interface devices are essential.
An end-to-end fiber integration solution can be achieved by connecting a module in a high density ION chassis with either a module in another ION chassis or a stand-alone Lantronix’s media converter.
The ION Management Module connects to the chassis backplane and communicates with the individual cards in the ION Chassis to deliver specific features and functions. For example, a network administrator can configure, monitor and troubleshoot ION slide-in modules remotely via the ION Management Module.
To accommodate different customer needs and requirements, the ION Platform has been designed with the versatility to adapt to each customer’s management and security level requirements.
Iron Mountain Benefits
Iron Mountain is currently using the Transition Networks solution in its Boston, MA, Boyers, PA and Kansas City, MO facilities. Iron Mountain’s Data Center business is growing with a new 83-acre campus opening in 2017 in Northern Virginia. Iron Mountain will expand its use of Transition Networks solutions as they’re built into the design of the new Manassas, VA data center.
By utilizing the Transition Networks solution Iron Mountain has a more versatile and secure fiber integration system in place enabling them to manage services for their customers more rapidly, comprehensively and consistently. Iron Mountain now has more flexibility and scalability, allowing the company to cost-effectively move a variety of circuits around an entire campus, reaching long distances and across a network infrastructure, all while meeting the company’s high security standard.
About Iron Mountain
Iron Mountain Incorporated® (NYSE: IRM) is the global leader in storage and information management services. Trusted by more than 230,000 organizations around the world, Iron Mountain’s real estate network comprises more than 85 million square feet across more than 1,400 facilities in 46 countries dedicated to protecting and preserving what matters most for its customers. Iron Mountain’s solutions portfolio includes records management, data management, document management, data centers, art storage and logistics, and secure shredding, helping organizations to lower storage costs, comply with regulations, recover from disaster, and better use their information. Founded in 1951, Iron Mountain stores and protects billions of information assets, including critical business documents, electronic information, medical data and cultural and historical artifacts.