Dear ,
By 2020, about 1.7MB of new information will be created every second for every human being on the planet.
Arkivum focuses on solutions that address the challenges of storing these large and growing volumes of data for long periods of time while guaranteeing future data integrity, usability and trustworthiness. With customers across the cultural heritage, higher education, healthcare and life sciences sectors, Arkivum already works with a range of partners to deliver integrated solutions that can be deployed on-site; as managed services; or fully hosted.
Arkivum was founded in 2011 as a spin-out from the University of Southampton. The technology originated from the Southampton IT Innovation Centre, a University group that focused on collaborative and industrial research.
Arkivum’s core technology was developed out of a collaborative project that sought to bridge the gap between the business needs for long-term data retention (cost, safety, security, accessibility) and the IT aspects of how to implement storage systems to support these needs over very long timescales (storage technologies, data movement and replication, integrity management, SLAs and storage as a service).
The Technology
Arkivum offers a range of storage solutions targeting the high-integrity, long-term data archive market, providing the only service that offers the level of data safety and audit chain transparency that long-term archiving customers require. Three encrypted copies of customer data are held at all times in geographically disparate locations, including a secure offline copy in third-party escrow. This ensures customer data is safe even in the most catastrophic scenarios and is unmatched by any other cloud storage provider (it also enables customers to get access to their data in the event that anything happens to Arkivum).
Arkivum’s offering is quite different to products in the generic cloud storage market where service levels and pricing models do not match archive customer needs. Arkivum’s use of escrow is unique and difficult for existing disk-based storage providers to implement and Arkivum’s software provides a simple and reliable way to integrate the archive into existing IT infrastructure.
Examples of organisations addressing their data archive challenges using Arkivum’s service include the Francis Crick Institute, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, and New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
The Business Model
Using Arkivum’s storage service allows customers simultaneously to reduce capital expenditure, cope with ever-increasing storage volumes and improve regulatory compliance. Arkivum’s unique insurance-backed 100% data integrity guarantee ensures that data is kept safe and secure and available on demand.
Arkivum’s business model is underpinned by the long-term nature of its customer relationships, driving strong annuity revenues. Arkivum’s customers not only renew their contracts, but their storage volumes increase over time. One client sees its storage requirement doubling year-on-year and recently committed to a 5-year storage contract. Another has paid up front for 8 years of data storage.
Over the last two years, Arkivum has seen steady revenue growth by focussing on the following sectors:
Healthcare and Life Sciences
• Medical records – increasing data volumes from medical imaging and digital pathology where compliance-driven retention periods are measured in multiple decades
• Genomics research – massive data volumes as gene therapies move from lab to clinic with multi-decade retention periods
• Pharmaceutical data management – strong regulatory drivers, life-of-drug – on-market retention periods, very large data sets
Higher Education
• Management and storage of publically-funded research data – high-value data driving university funding, “forever” retention periods, very large volumes
Digital Heritage and Culture
• Collection preservation, management and access – Digitisation of physical assets for preservation and for enabling public / monetised access
Growth Opportunity
The company has recently begun to strengthen its commercial and sales capabilities in order to capitalise on its solid recent performance. Growth is expected to be delivered through both enriching existing relationships and opening up new sectors.
Arguably all commercial sectors are affected by the relentless growth in data volumes. For example:
• Aviation: each flight of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner generates 1.5TB of data that is used to help manage performance and provide early prediction of failures
• Mobile Telecoms: huge data volumes and long retention periods to derive maximum insight
• Energy: smart meters throwing off consumer usage information, together with real time indication of faults and interruptions to service
• Media and Entertainment: estimated to be worth approximately £500M/year
• Financial Services: with a strong compliance driver and very large data volumes the financial services sector offers strong opportunities to drive growth
• Construction: With the long design life of most buildings and civil engineering structures, records generated during and after construction often have a very long retention period
The company is now well positioned to exploit these extraordinary market trends.
The Team
Guy Yaniv, CEO, joined the team in May 2016. An experienced executive in general management, sales, marketing, R&D, strategy and operations in the global high growth high-technology sector, Guy specialises in the establishment, change & turnaround, growth and realignment phases of an organisation, by executing innovative strategies. He has proven track record of successfully running and scaling up small and large (more than $450m turnover) global organisations from the ground up.
Jim McKenna, Chairman, Formerly COO of Logica Plc, Jim is chairman and investor in a number of private equity and venture–backed businesses.
Dr Matthew Addis, CTO, is a highly regarded expert in digital preservation, with experience in multi-‐national research projects and industry implementation. He was formerly Research Manager at IT Innovation Centre, University of Southampton.
The Investment Case
Over the last few years Arkivum has demonstrated good commercial traction, with clients won in a variety of market sectors and growth seen in revenues and order intake. The business model, generating long-term recurring revenues, continues to be attractive. With the arrival of a new CEO and a strengthening of the commercial team overall, the business now has all the tools necessary to fully exploit this exciting technological marketplace.
It is notable that through the company’s partnership programmes, strong relationships are being developed with many of the behemoths of the cloud storage industry. In due course, this business will be a strong candidate for exit either through a listing or trade sale.
