Already a global leader in data and records management services, Iron Mountain is expanding aggressively into key markets around the world. In its latest move, the company has begun construction on a $430 million data center on a nine-acre site in east Phoenix.
The new 550,000-square-foot, three-story, 48-megawatt multi-tenant facility will double the size of the existing adjacent campus, which was formerly the flagship location of IO Data Centers.
Iron Mountain acquired the existing 38-megawatt data center and the adjacent land parcel when it purchased the U.S. operations of Phoenix-based IO Data Centers LLC for $1.34 billion in January 2018.
The new facility, at the northeast corner of 48th and Van Buren streets, will be built in two phases over five years. The first phase, which will add 24 megawatts of capacity, is scheduled to open in June 2019.
IO Data Centers bought the nine-acre parcel in 2016 for $8.55 million, intending to expand its Phoenix campus over the next six to eight years. Planning and approvals for the site were complete prior to IO’s acquisition by Iron Mountain, according to Data Center Frontier.
As the largest provider of data center services in the Phoenix market, IO Data Centers developed an impressive customer base, including enterprise customers in finance, aerospace and technology.
With its acquisition of IO, Iron Mountain gained four data centers—two in Arizona, one in New Jersey and one in Ohio—with a combined total of 728,000 square feet and 62 megawatts of capacity. The company already owned six data centers in Boston, Denver, Kansas, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
Originally founded in 1951, Boston-headquartered Iron Mountain now owns more than 85 million square feet of real estate in 53 countries. Its 1,400-plus facilities serve more than 230,000 organizations around the world. The company’s total data center portfolio potential represents more than 285 megawatts.
And the expansion continues. Iron Mountain has been both building and buying additional capacity in multiple key markets.
It entered the Croatian market with its June 2017 purchase of Zagreb-based Arhiv Trezor, a provider of secure records management, destruction and transportation. The next month, Iron Mountain acquired Denver-based FORTRUST for $128 million, gaining a 210,000-square-foot data center in that city.
Also in 2017, the company purchased two data centers in London and Singapore from Credit Suisse for $100 million. And in May of this year, Iron Mountain acquired Amsterdam’s EvoSwitch for $235 million.
The company is also investing heavily in the Northern Virginia market, with a $350 million, 60-megawatt, multi-phase campus now underway on an 83-acre site in Prince William County. The $80 million, 165,000-square-foot first phase opened in September 2017, providing 10.5 megawatts of capacity.
And Iron Mountain has said it “has big plans for the Phoenix market.”
In a company press release, Rick Crutchley, vice president and general manager of Iron Mountain Data Centers’ western region, calls the new expansion project in Phoenix “an exciting opportunity for us.” He points to “growing demand from hyperscale, public cloud and global enterprise organizations,” as well as “the Phoenix market’s unique combination of low power costs, outstanding tax efficiency and low geographic and weather-related risks.”
Indeed, Phoenix is the 12th-largest data center market in the world by inventory in megawatts. And it’s the sixth most active data center market in the U.S., according to CBRE’s latest report on data center trends. The metro market has seen a surge in leasing over the past two years and is “poised for significant growth in 2018.”
