Data archiving has long been associated with rooms full of dusty tapes and outmoded, slow forms of storage. Archivists like to see themselves as data librarians, but are often referred to as the undertakers of the information age. As digital transformation has redefined IT infrastructure, content has also become increasingly digital in nature. Unlike physical media (print, etc.), digital media's virtual nature means that producing a 'live' copy requires additional steps. This is increasingly true for digital media attached to academic, medical and research firms, where long-term storage is required, with a guarantee that it can be returned to its original owner with 100% retention.

Since it was founded in 2011, Arkivum's business focus has been on the archival of data, describing its mission as helping organizations optimize the long-term value of their data. Based in Chippenham, England, the firm's genesis was at the University of Southampton, from where it was spun off as a separate business. Although it started out supplying services to academic institutions, the firm has since branched out into adjacent sectors, including healthcare, life sciences and financial institutions.

The 451 Take

The challenges of dealing with data and media in a digital form are different from physical ones. Increasing regulatory requirements for accessibility and persistence mean that digital data – typically for clinical and research purposes – needs to be kept for many years. Arkivum's managed services offer a specialist, fully hosted option for archiving. The company appears to be well aware of the sectors in which it operates, understanding that, whether you are a museum, bank, university or hospital, dealing with archival data is an ongoing activity that requires a continual focus on compliance and persistence in order to meet regulatory requirements.

Products

Arkivum offers two services – Arkivum 6 and Perpetua. Arkivum 6 is a modular offering, providing an extensible approach to compliance, governance, sovereignty and control. Arkivum provides an interesting case study from the University of London Computer Centre's Digital Data Archiving Project for the Linnean Society of London – the world's oldest active biological society. Perpetua is Arkivum's fully managed end-to-end hosted archival offering built on open source tools (Archivematica and AtoM from Artefactual). The service includes sector-specific compliance requirements, managed accessibility and a simplified operating model. An obvious concern for archiving is security, and Arkivum's offerings arguably take a 'belt and braces' approach. Access control starts via an appliance situated either on-premises or at a hosted location – encrypting all customer data and metadata before entering Arkivum's hosted environment. Arkivum's customers own the access keys, and they are stored securely outside of Arkivum's infrastructure.

Aside from managed access, the other typical security concern is data persistence. Enterprise firms often have uncertainties about the longevity of cloud data, the platforms they inhabit and the providers themselves. Arkivum says it addresses these concerns via data escrow, similar to that used for financial transactions. The firm arranges for one copy of the client's data archive to be stored offline with a third-party company, and should Arkivum experience a business failure or a client want to leave the company's service, an exit plan is therefore possible without loss, cost or penalties.

Within the UK, Arkivum delivers the managed services itself, using colocation datacenters in Swindon and Harrogate that provide for compliance with JANET for academic/universities and N3 for the UK's National Health Service (NHS). Outside the UK, the firm does not own a datacenter or use colocation – partnering either with a company that has datacenter space, or directly with cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure. In the latter case, Arkivum provides the middleware that allows the data to reside within a third-party datacenter yet still be protected.

Strategy

Given its roots in academia, Arkivum's offerings have clear appeal to the education sector. The firm says that half of the top-50 universities in the UK are already using its services. What is driving this need is the requirement to make research data accessible for a long period of time – potentially 10 years or longer. At the same time, Arkivum says it realized that it could not depend on universities approaching it directly (e.g., via word-of-mouth recommendations). It therefore also targeted related institutions, such as museums and national archives, that are often connected to teaching hospitals and research, such as the NHS Trusts in Oxford and Bristol.

In the case of London's Tate Gallery, the museum had an increasing number of high-value, time-based media installations (entailing over 52,000 pieces) that needed to be preserved for long periods of time. Given the volume of videos and other artworks, the museum has more works of art in digital form than in physical form. The Tate says it chose Arkivum because of the firm's expertise in digital archiving and the guarantee of 100% data persistence. Interestingly, the archive itself is housed on-premises – a replica of Arkivum's managed archive, but provided as a hosted service. This may seem counterintuitive, but as a museum, the organization is used to collecting, storing and hoarding physical objects. Other institutions have chosen to use an off-premises hosted archive – for example, the US-based Kramlich collection of new media and video uses Arkivum's service for storing a digital archive in the UK.

In the last year, Arkivum says it has transitioned into offering services more widely in the private sector, taking its archival know-how into the insurance and financial services sector. Companies operating in this market are subject to specific regulations (e.g., HIPPA2, MiFID II and the forthcoming GDPR). Many of these regulations require compliance around communications (e.g., conversations to be recorded), and any transaction-related interaction needs to be archived for five to seven years. The requirement means that firms need to show that they are taking proportional, actionable steps to protect their own business and the financial markets they work in. Arkivum believes that, unfortunately, IT departments sometimes do not understand the challenges facing compliance departments, and vice-versa, and sees its role as translating compliance requirements into technical solutions for those situations that represent a real threat to the business.

For other sectors, Arkivum sees itself as part of a wider offering, working with other go-to-market partners. In the healthcare sector, for example, Arkivum says it chooses to work with partners that generate the actual data – for example, companies that provide and sell lab equipment that inherently generates a lot of data, with an obligation to store and archive it. Elsewhere, Arkivum will partner with other providers in specific sectors – it recently announced that it has become a preferred partner in cloud service provider UKCloud's partner program in the UK, providing archiving offerings for the UK public sector. This move follows an earlier announcement of a partnership with TM Group, a Scandinavian provider of compliance offerings for financial services institutions, whereby Arkivum's products will be embedded and offered as a managed service.

Competition

While there are many hundreds of archiving and storage providers to choose from, digital archiving services are relatively uncommon. There are plenty of custom architectures in place, and many software-only options for personal and small-business content management. Perhaps closest are the systems integrators and other IT services firms providing digital archiving via cloud-based constructs – for example, T-Systems' Smart Archiving Services – or technology vendors such as Ex Libris, Iron Mountain and a plethora of content management system (CSM) providers. As a specialist firm, Arkivum has few direct competitors on the managed services side, and chooses not to include the core technologies of its customers – providing a level of differentiation.

SWOT Analysis

Strengths

Arkivum is recognized as a specialist in digital archiving, and its credentials in academia have provided inroads to adjacent markets – financial services, public sector – that have high budgets and long-term growth.

Weaknesses

Arkivum is a small firm and is therefore more vulnerable to client loss or market fluctuations than larger firms that have a broader portfolio of both technology and services.

Opportunities

The growth in demand for managed archival and storage services means a huge potential for new clients, particularly as the financial services sector returns to growth and further implements 'best practice' and transaction compliance measures.

Threats

While not providing a full end-to-end service, or one that is as potentially persistent, many larger service providers and technology vendors are seeing the opportunities in this niche area to provide add-on capabilities.

Rory Duncan
Research Director, European Services

Rory Duncan is the Research Director for 451 Research's Managed Services & Hosting channel. His research focuses on the global managed services and hosting market, where he tracks IT managed service providers, web and applications hosting firms and content delivery network providers. His coverage includes services, the IT distribution channel, market sizing, M&A activity, and factors that affect the business strategies of these companies.

Patrick Daly
Senior Research Associate, Information Security

As a Senior Research Associate in 451 Research’s Information Security Channel, Patrick Daly covers emerging technologies in Internet of Things (IoT) security. His research focuses on different industrial disciplines of IoT security, including the protection of critical infrastructure, transportation and medical devices. In addition, Patrick’s coverage spans technological domains, including security for IoT devices, applications, platforms and networks.

Keith Dawson
Principal Analyst

Keith Dawson is a principal analyst in 451 Research's Customer Experience & Commerce practice, primarily covering marketing technology. Keith has been covering the intersection of communications and enterprise software for 25 years, mainly looking at how to influence and optimize the customer experience.

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