The boom in hosted software is spilling over into email and electronic records archival. EDS and AXS-One announced last week that EDS will provide hosting for AXS-One's Compliance Platform, which stores electronic documents, emails, instant messages, reports, SAP data and desktop files according to predefined compliance policies. The software is designed to meet the requirements of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

Hosted archiving in theory provides instant usability and scalability, that's why many companies ship their back files out to Iron Mountain and others. In this case, users can log onto the web-based AXS-One Content Portal and search and retrieve files of all kinds. For instance, they can readily search Lotus Notes emails and view retrieved emails with search terms highlighted.