Arkivum

Arkivum is a digital archiving and preservation firm that provides a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution to ensure long-term data integrity and accessibility. The company was founded in 2011 by Matthew Addis and Richard Lowe, spinning out of the University of Southampton. Addis, serving as CTO, brought over fifteen years of experience in digital preservation strategies and system architectures from his time at the university's IT Innovation Centre. The company has secured approximately $23.7 million in funding over 12 rounds from investors including Oxford Capital, Growthdeck, and IP Group.

Arkivum's business model is subscription-based, providing recurring revenues and tailored packages for its clients. The firm targets a diverse, global customer base across highly-regulated industries such as life sciences, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, higher education, and cultural heritage, including galleries and museums. Arkivum works with organizations to consolidate long-term digital records into a central repository, helping them align with retention regulations like GxP, and industry standards such as ISO 9001 and ISO 27001. This approach aids in breaking down data silos and improving cost efficiencies.

The company's core offering is a cloud-based platform that goes beyond simple storage by actively preserving data. This service ensures that digital files remain secure, findable, accessible, and, crucially, usable in the future, regardless of hardware and software evolution. Key features include automated digital preservation workflows like file format identification and normalization, fixity checks to detect data corruption, and the ability to add and update metadata. The platform supports end-to-end workflows for ingesting, validating, preserving, and accessing digital assets, aligning with best practices like FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) and ALCOA+. To mitigate risk, data is stored in multiple geographic locations, and an escrow copy is maintained, ensuring customers can retrieve their data independently of Arkivum's service. The solution can be deployed on public cloud services like AWS and Google Cloud Platform or on-premises.

Keywords: digital archiving, data preservation, long-term data management, SaaS, data integrity, compliance archiving, GxP, FAIR data, ALCOA+, life sciences data, heritage preservation, research data archiving, cloud storage, ISO 27001, data lifecycle management, information governance, electronic archiving, digital stewardship, archival solutions, data security