Iron Mountain Expands In Phoenix With New Data-Center Facility

In a bid to expand its Phoenix data-center campus, Iron Mountain Incorporated (NYSE:IRM) recently announced the opening of a second enterprise-class data-center facility, AZP-2.

This initial phase offers four megawatts of simultaneously maintainable power capacity. Backed by scalable and flexible design, the facility is capable of catering to both multi-tenant enterprise retail colocation, as well as hyper-scale needs.

Moreover, at full build out, the three-story facility will encompass more than 530,000 gross square feet and offer 48 megawatts of total IT capacity. There will be campus connectivity to the current 45 megawatts operating in AZP-1 and AZS-1 in Scottsdale.

Considering the land held for future development, the Phoenix campus, spanning 40 acres, has the capability to support more than 100 megawatts of IT load after being fully developed.

In fact, this expansion is a strategic move as it will enable the company to expand its presence in one of the largest data-center markets in the United States. Notably, with lower costs and negligible risk for natural disasters, Phoenix has emerged as an active data-center market.

Notably, data centers will likely keep witnessing a boom market with growth in cloud computing, Internet of Things and big data, and an increasing number of companies opting for third-party IT infrastructure. Also, the estimated growth rates for the artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicle and virtual/augmented reality markets will remain robust over the next five to six years. These factors are anticipated to give significant impetus for growth to REITs focused on data centers, including Digital Realty (NYSE:DLR) , Equinix, Inc. (NASDAQ:EQIX) and CoreSite Realty Corporation (NYSE:COR) .

Particularly, Iron Mountain has earned reputation for its storage and information management services. With continued improvement in global storage organic revenues and volume growth, the company remains well poised to invest in new growth areas to drive its long-term business model. The company is focusing on growing its data-center business and bank on cross selling opportunities to realize synergies.

This Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company has outperformed its industry in the past month. Shares of Iron Mountain have gained 2.7% compared with the industry’s rally of 2.2%.

You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

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