Bill Lyons, AXS-One's CEO, believes that the opportunities for MSPs (managed service providers) in the hosted archiving market span across a number of vertical markets. Lyons said his company has fielded requests for AXS-One's archiving and records management software from health care, financial services, government and education customers.

The increase in interest, Lyons said, prompted him to consider adding MSP partners to better address these markets' need for the software. He hopes that the managed services offering will add dozens of new MSPs to AXS-One's partner roster.

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"These markets all have the same problem—most of their documents are electronic now, and they've got these outdated archive and backup systems based on tapes and paper files," Lyons said.

While these systems may work, they are inefficient, very expensive and time consuming, Lyons said, since customers often spend hours searching hundreds of tapes or physical storage locations to locate a few crucial files. Converting to a hosted, digital archiving system can save time and money for customers, said Lyons, since it provides instant access to files at a much lower cost.

To read more about how the MSP Partners organization is opening up to more vendors, click here.

Lyons said that AXS-One plans to continue offering its software direct to certain customers and market segments while simultaneously supporting new MSP partners. "We know that certain customers, in government or financial services, for example, don't want their sensitive data to live anywhere outside their own firewall," Lyons said, and those customers will be the focus of the direct sales push.

But for customers who don't have the in-house expertise or the financial resources to maintain and support the software and hardware, an MSP could provide them with a secure, off-site hosting facility and, with AXS-One's software, the ability to manage their digital archives, Lyons said.

Lyons said AXS-One currently has about 175 customers. According to IDC research, the hosted archiving market is projected to grow 22 percent by the year 2010.