17 Mar 2011 Iron Mountain partners with Basware to deliver e-invoicing services

The press releases from Iron Mountain recently raised a few eyebrows amongst the e-invoicing community. The announcement that they were to set up a 500 person strong unit in Europe to offer e-invoicing services to business was met with some surprise.

Well, it seems, according to a source close to what is going on, that the U.S. based firm, known for it’s traditional archiving offering, is coming to play in the relatively mature e-invoicing market in Europe with its eyes wide open. We understand that Iron Mountain will be bringing a number of products to the market, underpinned by a strategic alliance with Basware, one of the leading, established e-invoicing players.

This makes a lot of sense for Iron Mountain. Increasingly, service providers that support paper based business processes are looking for ways to continue to thrive in the increasingly digital business world. The “digital natives” – the new generation that has never known a world without the internet – are beginning to exert an influence in the way business works.

It’s an ironic truth that the writing’s on the wall for paper!

Digital Land Grab

The Iron Mountain/Basware partnership is not the beginning and will by no means be the end. The race to claim ownership of a piece of the new e-invoicing landscape is well underway and we can expect more alliances to be forged in the coming months as the traditional and digital players fight to claim their territory.