Industry news

Recall acquires CitiStorage

Global records and information management company Recall Holdings Ltd., headquartered in Norcross, Georgia, has announced that it has acquired CitiStorage LLC, a leading records management company based in Brooklyn, New York. Recall says the $47.2 million acquisition will be funded with cash and existing facilities. The acquisition expands Recall’s footprint in the New York City region and strengthens the company’s secure information management services in the largest U.S. market.

The acquisition of CitiStorage will add 4.6 million carton equivalents and approximately $25 million in revenue for fiscal year 2015, Recall says, with integration expected to begin immediately. The acquisition allows significant opportunities to maximize the use of and leverage costs across several facilities in the New York metro area, the company adds.

The acquisition will increase Recall’s earnings per share beginning in fiscal year 2015, the company says, adding that the acquisition price represents an EBITDA (earnings before the deduction of interest, tax and amortization expenses) multiple of less than seven.

“For more than 20 years, CitiStorage has maintained a strong reputation for providing outstanding service and value-added information management solutions to more than 2,000 customers across New York and New Jersey,” Recall says. “Through this acquisition, Recall further enhances its best-in-class portfolio of secure asset management offerings to markets across North America by integrating CitiStorage’s document storage and digital services.”

Doug Pertz, president and CEO of Recall, says, “As the third acquisition for Recall this year, the purchase of CitiStorage underscores our commitment to continued strategic growth. This growth strengthens the services we offer to our customers as well as the value we deliver to our shareholders. Since emerging as an independent company late last year, Recall has been executing against a highly focused plan and continues to identify companies and services that will enable us to better address the unique needs of customers around the world.”

With well-established industry expertise in health care, government, legal and financial services as well as in corporate and small business markets, CitiStorage customers fit seamlessly into Recall’s global customer base, the company says. Recall will provide these businesses and others throughout the region with an integrated approach to securely managing their physical and digital assets with a single partner.

“The acquisition of CitiStorage in New York and New Jersey further strengthens Recall’s presence as a leader in the Northeast region,” says Mark Wesley, president, Recall Americas. “This acquisition is an ideal fit, not only because of CitiStorage’s location in New York City, but also because of the synergy between CitiStorage’s well-respected services and Recall’s industry-leading information management expertise, technology and support. We are proud to welcome CitiStorage’s customers to the Recall family and promise to deliver them unmatched service and support.”

Recall serves more than 80,000 customer accounts in more than 300 dedicated operation centers, spanning five continents in 23 countries.
 

Inc. magazine recognizes Access

Livermore, California-based Access, the industry’s largest privately held provider of records and information management (RIM) services and the third-largest provider overall, has been named to Inc. magazine’s “Build 100 List.”

“We began the Build 100 project by collecting data on more than 100,000 U.S. midmarket companies (those with 85 to 999 employees),” says Scott Liebs, executive editor of Inc. magazine. “We then looked at how many increased head count in every year from 2007 to 2012. Remarkably, fewer than 1.5 percent of the companies met that standard. Of those that did, we selected a representative sample that agreed to work with us on a long-term research project to understand the factors responsible for sustained growth. We focused on head count rather than revenue because we found that increased hiring is more predictive of future sustained growth, and that’s what this project is all about.”

Access says it has added more than 250 employees and has expanded geographically, doubling in size with a major acquisition in October 2012, and acquiring more than 50 other records management companies from 2007 to 2012, including its further expansion in the Costa Rican market.

“Our company was proud to participate, and all of us are excited to have been recognized within this select group,” Access CEO Rob Alston says. “All of us at Access are committed to providing our clients the very best service—it is our defining mantra. To accomplish it—and to achieve this kind of national recognition—we hire and nurture only the most talented people; we identify, develop and maintain the most effective partnerships with organizations that can fully support our goals and we listen to our clients intently.”

Today, Access employs more than 550 people in more than 30 markets nationwide as well as in Latin America providing clients with a suite of RIM services.

NAID-Canada urges legislators to support bill S-4

Leaders of the Canadian chapter of the National Association for Information Destruction (NAID-Canada) are asking legislators to consider supporting S-4, a bill mandating a national data breach notification requirement in the country.

NAID-Canada is leading the initiative, and NAID CEO Bob Johnson has published a statement in NAIDnews, the association’s quarterly journal, lamenting the country’s lagging response to its data protection and enforcement shortcomings compared with advancements in other developed nations. “After starting out in a leadership role, Canada is in real danger of having the weakest data protection regulations in the developed world,” Johnson says.

Chapter leaders have contacted Canadian policymakers and have submitted a formal letter and whitepaper.

NAID is a nonprofit trade association of the secure destruction industry.

Business Records Management acquires Ohio company

Pittsburgh-based Business Records Management LLC (BRM) has announced its acquisition of document destruction company ABC Mobile Shredding, Eastlake, Ohio, and its related assets. ABC served northeast Ohio, providing on-site and off-site commercial and residential document destruction services.

BRM says it is “proud to acquire a company so well-known for superior customer service and is indeed excited to strengthen its position as one of the largest independently owned information management providers in the country.”

Founded in 1986, BRM operates secure facilities in the Pennsylvania cities of Pittsburgh, Erie and Johnstown and in Ohio and provides information management services to organizations in western Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and parts of Maryland and New York.
 

NAID honors two members at 2014 conference

At the National Association for Information Destruction (NAID) 2014 Annual Conference, Angie Singer Keating of Reclamere, Tyron, Pennsylvania, was presented with the 2013 Member of the Year Award, and Bob Haskins of Gigabiter, West Norristown, Pennsylvania, received the President’s Award.

Keating has served as a director of NAID for the last two years. In addition, she has served as chair of the NAID Certification Rules Committee and as co-chair of the NAID Solid State Device (SSD) Task Force. She is one of the most active speakers and authors in the electronic data protection sector and goes to great lengths to promote the benefits of NAID and NAID Certification, according to the association.

“While there are many others who deserved consideration, in the end her contribution stood out,” said NAID President Chris Isabell, who presented Keating with the award at the annual membership meeting lunch.

Before announcing the recipient of the President’s Award, which was decided by the outgoing 2013 NAID President Tom Huth, attendees were reminded that it is not given out every year but only when someone qualifies.

In honoring Haskins with the President’s Award, Huth said he had supported NAID from the moment he entered the industry. Prior to the 2014 convention, Haskins previously had attended every NAID conference since 1996.

Huth added that Haskins has served on multiple NAID boards as both a director and officer. Despite competing unsuccessfully for the NAID presidency in 2004, he continued to be active on a number of committees, even after selling his hard copy destruction business. His second company, Gigabiter, is one of the most respected electronic destruction firms in the U.S., according to NAID.

“In speaking his mind on controversial issues, he pushed the association to deeply consider issues related to particle size, hard drive sanitization and NAID certification,” Huth said of Haskins. “And he is still doing that today as co-chair of the NAID SSD Task Force and as the chair of the NAID Deguassing Certification Task Force.”

The NAID 2014 Annual Conference, which celebrated the group’s 20th anniversary, was April 4-6 at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix.

Panelists offer data protection solutions

A panel of three data protection services providers addressed some of the issues facing this segment of the commercial records an information management (RIM) industry in the Data Protection Solutions Clinic, a workshop offered during the 2014 PRISM International Annual Conference.

Tom Fetters of Norcross, Georgia-based Recall; Karen Lynch of DataSafe, South San Francisco, California; and Michael Massaro of Iron Mountain, Boston, shared their experiences offering data protection services.

When it comes to selling these services, Fetters said Recall has found success by employing former IT professionals who can speak the language of their prospective clients and who understand their concerns.

In addition to broadening its sales expertise, Recall expanded its data protection services beyond tape rotation to include email archiving, data recovery and e-discovery software, he added.

“I feel that we are on a better path than we were,” Fetters said of these changes.

Lynch said that with a sales staff of only seven people, DataSafe does not have sales personnel dedicated to data protection services.

DataSafe offers tape backup as well as cloud services, depending on clients’ needs. She said these services often lead to additional data protection services or other sales opportunities.

Lynch suggested partnering with IT consultants and managed service providers to get in prospective clients’ doors.

When it comes to tape versus cloud storage, Lynch said, “If we’re competing, we have already lost ground,” adding that the price of cloud services usually drives people back to tape.

She suggested that when service providers notice that their customers’ habits have changed they initiate a conversation with them. Lynch advised proposing that mission critical data are saved to tape as well as noting the advantages this medium offers for archive storage.

Fetters suggested asking clients the logic behind shifting to the cloud, pointing out any associated drawbacks.

“We like taking the consultative approach,” he says of Recall’s sales process.

Concerning steps that commercial records centers can take to reduce the likeliness of a data breach, Massaro suggested establishing standard operating procedures.

Fetters said Recall instituted breach testing where it introduces a problem in a controlled environment. “This has worked tremendously well,” he said, adding that the results are reported to Recall’s CEO and that a certain number of tests are required yearly.

Lynch also advised attendees to ask to see a potential customer’s data center, as this could lead to other opportunities for storing hard drives, discs and microfiche. “You will uncover so many opportunities and get higher profit margins just by making a visit.”

The 2014 PRISM International Annual Conference was held May 5-8 at the Westin Mission Hills in Rancho Mirage, California.