Behind the award: Q&A with Enterprise CTO Swami Jayaraman

The Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council (MTLC) recently awarded Iron Mountain’s InSight Digital Experience Platform (DXP) its Tech Top 50 Award in AI Implementation. To better understand the strategy and collaboration behind this award—and ultimately how you’ll be impacted as an Iron Mountain customer—we sat down with Enterprise Chief Technology Officer, Swami Jayaraman, for his unique perspective.

Swami Jayaraman, Enterprise Chief Technology Officer at Iron Mountain, shares the story behind the award.

Question:

The AI implementation category was competitive, with major players like Salesforce and Bullhorn in the running. What set Iron Mountain and InSight DXP apart in the eyes of the MTLC leadership?

Answer:

It was a tough category, for sure, especially given the rapid pace of AI implementation across these and other organizations. We used our own InSight DXP case study to showcase the breadth and depth of AI adoption across the entire tech stack and various business units here at Iron Mountain. We gave the MTLC the evidence they needed that we were serious about a complete transformation in four specific areas:

First, the scale of impact was huge. Our holistic approach to AI implementation resulted in widespread changes to efficiency, innovation, and potential new revenue streams in the millions.

We had incredibly strong organizational buy-in. We were very methodical in educating all our associates on AI and allowed them to contribute ideas at a grassroots level. We were committed to leveraging AI within InSight DXP as a fundamental driver of the business.

We established an AI Center of Excellence to oversee AI activities across the enterprise and create a more intelligent and interconnected ecosystem. In one example, AI-powered customer service informed AI-driven product development, leading to a virtuous cycle of improvement.

Finally, we focused on atypical AI applications as a differentiator. The AI applications for InSight DXP span a potentially wider array of less traditional AI-centric areas, like infrastructure management, code development and deployment, and our core data management services.

I’m confident these key areas of implementation are why we snagged the win.

Related: Streamlining from within: Iron Mountain deploys its own InSight DXP

Question:

While the efficiency gains you demonstrated in the case study are substantial—like 458 monthly hours saved in customer onboarding—what do you see as the single most innovative aspect of the InSight DXP AI implementation that contributed to this win?

Answer:

While those efficiency numbers are definitely something to be proud of, I think the ability to leverage our own platform and support a variety of use cases pushed us to the top. Having a cohesive AI strategy, rather than just a collection of disparate projects, is what allowed us to achieve success within InSight DXP and showed the power of this pervasive technology platform.

We used InSight DXP to automate how Iron Mountain associates perform data entry on behalf of our customers through the Smart Catalog program. This wasn’t just internal optimization; it directly translated to improved efficiency and accuracy for our customers, speeding up their time to value.

As mentioned, we also significantly reduced the time it took to onboard new customers into the Iron Mountain ecosystem. Extracting structure from unstructured data, making it AI-ready, and feeding that insight into our systems provided much-needed clarity for our onboarding teams. This meant a faster, less error-prone process, which, at the end of the day, makes our customers happier.

Question:

How does agentic AI change the game for our customers?

Answer:

Question:

We showed how AI could be used for predictive maintenance, code reviews, and security audits. While these might seem like internal optimizations, how do they ultimately contribute to more reliable and secure service for our customers?

Answer:

Think of predictive maintenance as a silent guardian. We deployed AI to diligently monitor infrastructure and predict potential failures. The customer impact? Less downtime and fewer service disruptions. The systems holding their valuable data are consistently available and functioning optimally. While a customer might not see the AI algorithms at work, they experience a more reliable service, inherently protecting the integrity and availability of their data.

Similarly, AI-powered code reviews and security audits are like fortifying our digital walls. Every line of code is a potential gateway, either for efficiency or for vulnerabilities. Leveraging AI to meticulously scrutinize our codebase for bugs and security flaws is like having an always-vigilant quality assurance team. This rigorous internal process translates directly to a more secure platform for our customers. Fewer bugs mean smoother operations and a reduced risk of errors in data processing. Stronger security audits mean their sensitive information is better protected against breaches and unauthorized access.

These optimizations provide customers with a service they can trust with their data, knowing it’s handled by systems built with security and accuracy in mind.

Question:

How does the AI-driven cloud migration strategy impact customers’ need for scalability and performance?

Answer:

AI-driven cloud migration has been an integral part of the platform’s success. When it comes to scalability, AI enables dynamic resource allocation based on workload patterns, intelligent tiering of storage for cost optimization, and predictive scaling for future growth. In terms of performance, AI optimizes workload placement across cloud regions and provides proactive monitoring and optimization.

For our customers, this ultimately translates to:

• Faster innovation cycles as our teams focus on development
• Improved data accessibility and analytics through a more integrated cloud environment
• Enhanced reliability and resilience with optimized disaster recovery processes

This AI-driven approach builds a smarter, more agile, and performant foundation. It also allows us to scale efficiently, deliver consistently high-quality services, and accelerate the development of innovative solutions.

Question:

The team leveraged AI to detect and mitigate risks and ensure compliance across use cases. What does this mean for those of us in highly regulated industries?

Answer:

Our customers need partners who take compliance as seriously as they do. All of the AI systems that we design inside InSight DXP provide a detailed audit trail of their analysis and decision-making processes. We have to show the thinking process behind the AI and how an AI model arrived at a specific set of answers. By using AI to continuously monitor and analyze vast data sets, we move beyond reactive measures to predicting potential risks and compliance issues before they escalate.

AI-powered systems can help us identify, analyze, and respond much more quickly than traditional models. This rapid response capability minimizes the potential impact of risks and compliance breaches on our customer operations.

Our proactive use of AI transforms risk and compliance from what used to be a cost center type approach into a strategic differentiator. It allows us to offer our customers not just services but also assurance of a secure, compliant, and reliable partnership. This level of trust and dependability is non-negotiable in these highly regulated industries.

Related: Retention, privacy, and security: Keys to AI success

Question:

This award shows our commitment to responsible AI, including trusted and secure data. How can we help our customers build data confidence in the age of AI?

Answer:

In a world where the influence of AI is rapidly expanding, our commitment to responsible AI practices means we put an emphasis on data you can trust, strong data privacy and security, and ways to reduce bias. These tenets build and maintain deep trust and confidence in the data used by InSight DXP. We ensure this trust and confidence by:

Thinking through the ethical implications right from the start: As part of our development process, our team regularly addresses concerns surrounding data security, privacy violations, and biased outcomes.

Building a foundation of transparency: You (like us) will only trust systems that you understand and believe are fair. By actively working to ensure the data used is reliable and by mitigating potential biases, we demonstrate accountability in how our AI operates.

Keeping pace with regulations: Reducing risk requires staying ahead of global regulations that change almost daily. Our commitment to data privacy and future readiness ensures that our solutions continuously align with these evolving requirements.

Approaching responsible AI as a strategic imperative: Valuing trustworthy data not only helps us deliver innovative AI solutions but does so with deep respect for our customers’ needs and values.

Question:

How can we help our customers build data confidence in the age of AI?

Answer:

Question:

What future benefits can our customers anticipate as we continue to evolve our AI-powered capabilities?

Answer:

As we expand AI capabilities within InSight DXP, particularly with agentic AI, customers can anticipate enhanced automation and efficiency across workflows, more personalized and proactive experiences, deeper insights for better decision-making, and more intuitive and natural interactions with our systems. These AI advancements are designed to augment human capabilities and drive not only greater efficiency but also intelligent decision-making.

This award from MTLC confirms that we are on the right path to deliver even greater value through sophisticated and responsible AI integration.

Related: Building the foundation for digital workers

Question:

How are we creating a responsible foundation for innovation at Iron Mountain?

Answer:

Question:

The Tech Top 50 Award is a testament to the hard work of many teams across Iron Mountain. How did collaboration and shared vision contribute to this win?

Answer:

Achieving AI implementation at this award-winning level speaks volumes about the walls that don’t exist inside Iron Mountain.

Our IT and AI Center of Excellence teams not only provided the backbone for AI implementation but also actively partnered to optimize AI workloads. Security, compliance, and legal experts were embedded from the beginning, ensuring that innovation did not come at the cost of trust and non-negotiable compliance.

Business units, engineers, developers, and analysts collaborated to identify problems, develop and implement AI solutions, and translate customer needs into tangible applications.

I truly believe this cross-pollination of expertise was the secret sauce for our success. Like in any large-scale undertaking, we experienced roadblocks and challenges, but because of this deeply ingrained collaborative spirit, those challenges became opportunities for shared problem-solving. We had open feedback loops humming across departments, leading to this incredible iterative improvement and opening the door for the future of information management for our customers.

Many thanks to Swami and his team for sharing their story. Explore InSight DXP to learn more about why it’s turning heads in the tech community.