The company will close its services, which is targeted at archival of inactive file data and its , which allows software vendors to integrate the Iron Mountain API to leverage the company's cloud architecture.

Iron Mountain s Virtual File Store, offered through the Boston-based vendor's Digital Division, was marketed as an enterprise-class archiving service that gives users a lower-cost means of storing and managing static data files than keeping them on in-house systems.

that it will continue to offer services to its current cloud storage customers as it also helps them migrate to another provider or return their data.

Iron Mountain did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Computerworld, but the company told Gartner it plans to shut down its online storage business no sooner that the first half of 2013.

Virtual File Store customers that stay with Iron Mountain will be transferred to a higher-value offering, File System Archiving (FSA) in 2012. The new offering will be a hybrid that leverages policy-based archiving on site and in the cloud with indexing and classification capabilities.