OPF foresees a potential market in commercial industry once awareness and subsequently compliance on long-term access become reality. This will have immediate impact on policies, practices and workflow in major enterprises. Major changes in compliance and change in industry are often driven by the major business consultancy firms such as IBM Global Services (formerly Price Waterhouse Coopers), KPMG, Deloitte, Accenture, Ernst & Young and many others. Consultancy firms are strategic partners to gain access to industry. It would be of enormous value to our industry (not for profit memory institutions) if our business practices and tools can be adopted beyond our sector.

Commercial companies will need robust and tools engineered for reliability, this process of re-engineering will bring quality and competitiveness to long-term access tooling and practices. Industry will benefit from the existing thought leadership in the digital preservation network and the network will benefit from engineering competences in technology industry.

MBA students of Cambridge Judge Business School are currently doing market research into the potential for Digital Preservation and Long Term Access tools for a selected amount of of verticals in industry, as part of their MBA program. This research is supported by Microsoft Research and OPF. OPF sponsors the research. By mid December we expect to be able to communicate on the outcome. I will keep you posted in the coming period about progress.