Speed, scale, and solutions

As I come to the end of my first year heading up our global data center business, I took a little time to reflect on the key factors that have made Iron Mountain Data Centers into one of the world´s top ten data center providers.

I joined Iron Mountain Data Centers in spring 2025 after four years of leading EMEA operations for Equinix. Prior to that I headed up the UK Ministry of Defence´s Science & Technology Laboratory, and before that I built my career over two decades in a variety of roles with Motorola Solutions. While I have enjoyed all of these roles, I can safely say that I have never worked in such an exciting organisation at such an exciting time. We are operating in one of the fastest-growing markets the world has ever seen, with hyperscaler, neocloud, enterprise and service provider spend at an all time high.

The growth of Iron Mountain Data Centers is exceptional. Revenue increased by nearly 30% this year. Approximately 85 megawatts of new capacity came online, bringing us to about 450 megawatts of operating capacity and 97% of this is already leased.

However, it´s not just the growth, it is the whole working environment that has a buzz about it. Over the last year I have visited almost all of our global data centers - quite a feat as we now have over 30 facilities in 21 markets spread across three continents. In the process I met many customers, employees, and partners, and was impressed by the overwhelming enthusiasm for the business, and the sector as a whole.

Challenges & solutions

Clearly such steep growth cannot be addressed without solving significant technical and business challenges. I am an electrical engineer by training, and began my career in research and product development, and this gives me an appreciation of the technical side of what we are doing as we redesign our portfolio to enable AI. I also find that an instinct towards solving problems, innovating, and thinking forward, is essential for developing a business and serving customers as well as creating technology solutions.

Our challenges - and solutions - come in many shapes and sizes:

• Scaling up

  The scale of the industry´s construction challenge has ramped up phenomenally, from 20-30 megawatt facilities to 200 megawatt up to gigawatt campuses, which require tens of billions of dollars in investment and thousands of people to build, run, and supply them. So far, the gigawatt campus phenomena has been concentrated in North America, but it is now set to spread to Europe and Asia, to meet growing demand for sovereign AI solutions.
  
  Anticipating developments on this scale, we have bolstered our design and construction team, standardised our designs, densified our supply chain and broadened our land and power banking pipeline to achieve new levels of scale worldwide.
  
  North America is still the busiest market for investment, and we are building out fast in hot markets like Phoenix and Miami, with hyperscale focus in Data Center Alley in Northern Virginia, where 150 MW of new capacity is being built in Manassas. We have also moved fast in Richmond, Virginia, as the hub spills south, with another million square feet and 200 MW of planned capacity.
  
  At the same time, we are undertaking larger developments in the rest of the world, and anticipate high rates of growth in our EMEA and APAC footprints as AI inference overtakes AI training. In Europe we are currently building out in established FLAP hubs like Amsterdam and London, as well as new hubs like Madrid, where we are on our way to 79 MW of capacity. And we just completed the acquisition and integration of our Indian partner Web Werks, with hyperscale-sized facilities in Mumbai and Chennai and a total of 10 facilities with 150 MW of capacity either built or in progress.
  
  

• Staying cool

  Liquid cooling was a future concept a few years ago, but now it is becoming mainstream, and we now have both standard design air cooling and liquid cooling on tap, for pure ML/AI or hybrid solutions. We are offering up to 50 kW per rack just now, but are fully aware that design configurations are evolving fast, and density will increase even more - at some point we might even be looking at 1 MW per rack with immersion cooling. Our design and construction team are front and center in this change, and I have been impressed at how quickly they have pivoted to designing facilities that offer customers what they need for AI.
  
  

• Providing power

  Everyone agrees that the industry's biggest challenge is access to power and this shortage is set to become more acute. With power-constrained grids in most markets, we need to be as flexible and resourceful in power purchasing and provision as we are in facility design, taking facilities to where there is power rather than the other way round. The industry is innovating rapidly, witnessed by the quick maturity of technologies like small modular reactors (SMRs), on-site gas generation, and liquid cooling.
  
  Power and land banking are the key to meeting demand for power, and we have put the capex in place to look further forward. Scaling up needs a big diverse pipeline and we aim to double our current 1.3 GW pipeline to 2.6 GW between now and 2030.
  
  We also need to power up responsibly. Fortunately, this is an area in which Iron Mountain Data Centers has always been a pioneer. This includes engaging with take-or-pay power purchasing to support grid extensions and upgrades, and rolling out new on-site power solutions, such as BESS (Battery Energy Storage Systems), which we are pioneering in several locations. By the end of this year, for instance, our New Jersey data center will be able to run its full IT load for several hours on batteries, bringing down the peak load on the grid for the benefit of all local power users.
  
  

• Mitigating impact

  This huge power demand necessitates even more creativity to advance sustainability commitments. As customers and colleagues recognise, Iron Mountain goes a step further in this area. We have offered 100% annual renewable power certification since 2017. Our Green Power Pass allows customers to report on their power quickly and verifiably, and all of our new builds are certified to the BREEAM environmental standard.
  
  Our 2022 commitment to 100% clean power tracked hour by hour by 2040 is still unique among global providers, and 75% of our power worldwide is now tracked hourly. The regulatory landscape is changing fast, and it will be interesting over the coming months to see whether the granular reporting requirements in the new Greenhouse Gas Protocol are agreed. As we are already a long way down the road on this, I hope that our experience will be invaluable for customers and colleagues who want to achieve their climate targets under the new reporting regime.
  
  

• Satisfying customers

  When demand is this high, customer focus often goes by the board. I am pleased to say that so far Iron Mountain Data Centers has avoided this pitfall. Our Net Promoter Score (NPS) has improved year-over-year, increasing from 54 last year to 56.9 this year, with scores of over 50 in every operating region. Anyone who works with the NPS ratings will recognise that these are exceptional levels.
  
  I think our "secret sauce" is the deep technical ability of individuals and the team's strong collaboration. Customers often prefer to speak directly with the people who "make the stuff" rather than just those who sell it, allowing for high-level, "engineer to engineer" conversations. The trust this builds forges long-term relationships as well as driving sales.
  
  

Looking back, looking forward

I have no doubt that the challenges will continue to pile up, but I believe that our team is equal to them, in fact from what I have seen it has an appetite for them.

As the year turns, it is also worth noting how far the business has come. While the Iron Mountain group has been a global business for generations, the data center business only began to expand internationally in 2017, with the acquisition of IO and EvoSwitch data centers. In just eight years Iron Mountain Data Centers has become one of the top 10 global data center providers. We also have an excellent reputation in the industry, and for me one of the high points of last year was winning the Datacloud Global Data Center Provider of the Year Award.

Our data center business is one of the fastest-moving operators in the global colo, cloud and AI space, but it is also uncompromising in terms of security, sustainability and customer focus.

Demand for data center capacity is projected to reach nearly 90 GW by 2030, racing ahead of supply. We will need to continue to be agile, ambitious, innovative, and collaborative to make the most of this exceptional demand.