Iron Mountain wins Google Cloud award for media archives

Iron Mountain has been named Google Cloud Partner of the Year in the Business Applications: Media & Entertainment category, recognising its work with media archives on Google Cloud.

The award focuses on Iron Mountain's use of Google Cloud tools in services for media and entertainment organisations, including music studios, record labels, broadcasters and sports teams. It works across more than 100 million media assets, combining archival preservation with AI-based search and discovery.

Its offering is aimed at organisations that need to preserve older material while making it easier to access and reuse commercially. That includes digitising at-risk legacy media formats and storing them in geo-redundant digital vaults on Google Cloud.

Archive owners also face an ongoing challenge in balancing security, accessibility and commercial use of stored content. Iron Mountain's services are designed to help customers manage those competing demands while keeping large libraries available for brand storytelling and licensing work.

AI platform

A central part of that work is Iron Mountain InSight DXP, an AI-based content platform built to manage large media files, including 4K and 8K video and multi-track audio. The system is intended for content libraries that are difficult to manage with more standard storage products.

Iron Mountain has also introduced an InSight DXP AI Agent, which allows users to query managed content libraries in natural language. The tool is designed to operate alongside records management and compliance controls.

That combination reflects a wider shift in the media sector, as archive owners look for ways to turn historical collections into active commercial assets. Large libraries of film, audio, photography and production material have gained new relevance as rights owners seek licensing revenue, fan engagement opportunities and internal production efficiencies.

Archives have also become harder to manage as file sizes grow and older physical formats deteriorate. Digitisation and cloud storage have long been part of the solution, but AI search tools now make it easier to identify, classify and retrieve material at scale.

Mithu Bhargava, Executive Vice President, Digital Solutions, Iron Mountain, said: "This award reinforces Iron Mountain's commitment to helping industries navigate the digital frontier. Our physical preservation experience and Google Cloud's AI scalability helps ensure the stories of our time are safe, searchable, and ready for the world."

Google Cloud said the award recognises customer work carried out over the past year. Its annual partner awards highlight selected partners across sectors and product areas.

"The Google Cloud Partner Awards honor the strategic innovation and measurable value our partners bring to customers," said Kevin Ichhpurani, President, Global Partner Ecosystem and Channels, Google Cloud. "We are proud to name Iron Mountain a 2026 Google Cloud Partner Award winner, celebrating their role in driving customer success over the last year."

Customer work

Among the examples cited by Iron Mountain is its work with the McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 Team. The project involves digitising decades of archive material, including blueprints and film footage, to preserve the team's history and make more of it usable.

The use case points to a broader trend beyond traditional media companies. Sports organisations, like film and music rights holders, are increasingly treating archives as a source of fan engagement and commercial value rather than simply records to be stored.

Iron Mountain's position in this market rests partly on its long-established records and archival business. Traditionally known for physical storage and information management, the company has expanded into digital services, data centres and content-focused software as customers move more workflows online.

The Google Cloud award also adds to a longer history of recognition between the two companies. Iron Mountain was previously named a Google Cloud Global Technology Partner of the Year for AI and Machine Learning and also received a Google Cloud Customer Award for work with a financial institution.

For Iron Mountain, the latest recognition underlines media preservation's role as a commercial technology service as much as an archival one. The business case now extends beyond safeguarding collections to making them searchable and usable across licensing, production and audience-facing projects.

Iron Mountain says it serves more than 240,000 customers across 61 countries, including about 95% of the Fortune 1000.