However, "the days of physical remote storage are clearly numbered," he noted. "If we were a smaller shop, we'd be doing all our backups over the wire now."

Fires such as those that hit Iron Mountain's facilities are not unheard of, said Larry Medina, a Danville, Calif.-based records management professional at a company he asked not to be named. Medina, who is chairman of the Association of Records Managers and Administrators, cited three suspicious fires in March 1997 in an Iron Mountain facility in South Brunswick, N.J.

During Iron Mountain's earnings conference call last week, Chairman and CEO C. Richard Reese said that in response to the Ottawa fire, the company will take additional precautions during building repairs.

John Kenny Jr., executive vice president and chief financial officer, noted that Iron Mountain expects to exhaust a US$750,000 insurance deductible it has for each incident. However, the company is not changing its financial guidance for the rest of the year, executives said.