BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
Iron Mountain Incorporated® (NYSE:IRM), the global leader in storage and information management services, today announced the results of a recent research survey1 that reveals the risks associated with licensing critical software applications, and why procurement professionals and IT asset managers must take protections to safeguard the software that is at the heart of their business operations.
Key findings of Iron Mountain’s research will be shared at the upcoming Gartner IT Financial & Procurement Asset Management Summit, including:
- Fifty-five percent of IT decision makers report having licensed critical software applications from a vendor that did not meet expectations.
- When enterprises select vendors that ultimately do not meet expectations, it wastes valuable resources and increases costs. This impacts business in several ways: 64 percent of respondents said additional time and/or effort was required; 60 percent had project setbacks; and 47 percent noted added costs.
- On average, IT project failures cost businesses a 25 percent overrun.
Enterprises struggle with a range of negative consequences when a software vendor fails to provide adequate support. Technology escrow gives organizations leverage to demand better SLA compliance – and protection against a potentially dangerous total loss of support. If a software developer goes out of business, or otherwise discontinues support, an escrow release lets the software licensee continue with development in-house or keep suddenly unsupported products running long enough to find and implement a replacement. With the benefit of technology escrow, a copy of your software source code, data, build instructions, and third-party tools are stored securely with Iron Mountain. As a result, the wasted resources and cost overruns associated with vendors that do not meet expectations can be minimized or eliminated.
John Boruvka, vice president of Iron Mountain’s Intellectual Property Management business, explains, “This research illustrates a chief fear for IT asset managers, namely how to prepare for ‘what happens when the worst happens?’ In order to avoid that worst-case scenario, many forward-thinking companies build risk mitigation into the procurement process with technology escrow and verification. Additionally, beyond traditional escrow for on-premises applications, special considerations need to be taken for software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications and data, since when your software and data are in the cloud, the old rules no longer apply.”
Iron Mountain’s Intellectual Property Management group is exhibiting at the Gartner IT Financial & Procurement Asset Management Summit on Sept. 19 – 21 in Grapevine, TX, in booth #408. The summit covers critical topics in IT Asset Management, including vendor risk mitigation practices and managing software that resides in the cloud.
For more information:
- View the infographic with results of the IDG Survey of IT Decision Makers on Vendors and Application Support.
- Download the Executive Viewpoint Q&A, The Case for Technology Escrow from Business and Legal Perspectives.
About Iron Mountain
Iron
Mountain Incorporated (NYSE: IRM) is the global leader for storage and
information management services. Trusted by more than 220,000
organizations around the world, Iron Mountain’s real estate network
comprises more than 85 million square feet across more than 1,400
facilities in 45 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. Visit www.ironmountain.com
for more information.
1 This survey was conduct by IDG Research Services in June of 2016. A total of 161 IT Decision Makers were surveyed.
View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160919005233/en/
