Autonomy grew through acquisitions, buying everything from storage companies like Iron Mountain to enterprise software firms like Interwoven.

FORBES: With Autonomy, H-P Bought An Old-Fashioned Accounting Scandal. Here's How It Worked.

With the right combination of capacity, performance and rapid power cycling storage system designs can pump more iron while keeping cool and saving energy.

FORBES: Pumping Iron and Keeping Cool

Building a moat around a digital storage business would seem to require some technological advantage, and why would we look to Iron Mountain to develop that?

FORBES: An Iron Mountain With A Warren Buffett Moat Around It

We're not going to front like we understand exactly how it works, but two IBM researchers in California have announced that they've gotten closer to controlling the orientation and magnetic spin of individual iron atoms on a copper surface, which would have huge implications for nanotech storage -- imagine the basic tech in your hard drive shrunk down the molecular level.

ENGADGET: IBM researchers get closer to nanotech hard drives

Iron Mountain assembled much of that space in the 14 years since an IPO, acquiring smaller document storage firms.

FORBES: An Iron Mountain With A Warren Buffett Moat Around It