Digital preservation presents fruitful opportunity for channel, claims Arkivum

Digital archiving vendor unveils preservation product which it says fills a gap in the channel

Digital archiving and preservation vendor Arkivum is on the hunt for resellers to sell its new Perpetua preservation product, as it says the preservation market is an "incremental opportunity" for the channel.

Steve Mackey, vice president of sales at Arkivum, said that until recently awareness of digital preservation was confined to small niches such as conservation, museums, archives and libraries.

"Preservation isn't an offering which has been widely promoted by the channel in the past. So there are very few vendors and quite a small community of people selling it. There is a lot wider capability for usage of the service, and we believe there is a growing demand for that," he explained.

"There is a much wider opportunity for the channel to sell preservation solutions, not just the routes it goes down today. It is an incremental opportunity for the channel."

Bryan Betts, principal analyst at Freeform Dynamics, agreed with Mackey that digital preservation can be an opportunity for the channel that has not yet been pursued.

"Digital preservation is essential. Companies are starting to wake up now to the fact that a backup is not an archive. I think that presents a pretty good opportunity for the channel," he said.

"Arkivum are an interesting company because they have some interesting technology. They are specialists in that area, whereas a lot of the others are backup companies. These organisations have the expertise in data handling and data management, but it is not quite the same thing as archiving."

The Southampton-based vendor was founded in 2011 and originally focused solely on archiving. Its preservation product Perpetua was launched this month and makes data accessible and usable for years after it is stored.

Arkivum CTO Matthew Addis explained: "Storage is just about the bits and bytes. Preservation is being able to use that content. So being able to read the document, listen to the audio or play the video."

The vendor has a hybrid channel model, selling directly to some organisations. It currently has around 20 partners in the UK, and Mackey said he hopes to double that number in the next six months.

He said Arkivum is looking for partners with specific expertise in one of the vertical markets the product fits into. These include higher education, healthcare and local government.

It is also looking to strengthen the relationships it has with existing partners, by adding extra training and tech support to its partner programme. Arkivum CEO Guy Yaniv said that regardless of its direct sales, its focus is on partners.

"We are very happy with the partners we have," he said. "But we are keen to make [the relationship] better and be more important to them. The hybrid model presents questions as to where our hearts lie. We made the decision that we are going to have the partner business take centre stage in the way we do business."