A pioneer and innovator in CD, DVD, Blu-ray™ and data management: Rimage

The Silicon Review

Rimage has been a pioneer and innovator in developing and manufacturing systems for digital data distribution and archiving for the past 40 years. The earliest days of Rimage began in 1978 with the formation of IXI Laboratories. IXI developed floppy diskette certifiers, equipment that diskette manufacturers used to test every 8″ floppy diskette before sealing the flap on a plastic sleeve. With only 80-90% of diskettes passing certification, IXI’s certifiers were in high demand.

Today, Rimage is a global leader in offline, immutable, long-term data storage and preservation. The company customizes workflow-integrated data management hardware, software, and services solutions for data ingestion, transfer, preservation, and long-term archival. Rimage serves government, medical, law enforcement, financial and banking organizations with growing volumes of information that need to proactively manage storage resources and costs, as well as industries that are subject to data regulations.

In conversation with Christopher Rence, President and CEO of Rimage

Q. Can you explain about your services in brief?

Rimage provides data management solutions to protect, preserve, and restore long-term archived data on secure, immutable, optical storage media. Trusted by Fortune 500 companies and agencies around the world, when leveraged in a tiered storage environment, Rimage’s solutions can help organizations to better manage data resources, lower costs, defend against cyberattacks, and protect data integrity to meet long-term archival and compliance requirements.

Our services fall into five main categories:

Data management leader. Optical Thermal Printing, API integration to vertical industry data transfer solutions.

Offline, removable data management. Data is stored on CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray, USB, or other offline media to keep it out of the hands of cyber criminals.

Write once, read many (WORM) technology. Data is written indelibly on removable media so that it can be read any number of times, but never manipulated or changed.

Data Lifecycle Management. Movement of data is tracked through its lifecycle to document each user that handles it including our trusted chain of custody solutions.

Air-gapped, offline backup and recovery. A copy of your data is kept offline and inaccessible from the internet so that cyber criminals can’t get to it.

Q. How did you decide what types of products you want to make? How did you come up with this name?

Rimage stands for re-image, so it highlights the company’s expertise in taking all types of data and re-imagining it onto different types of technologies. Our company offers four primary products:

Defense in Layers: Rimage Protection Shield (RPS)

Rimage Protection Shield is a Cyber Security Solution that provides a point-in-time archive of a user-defined set of digital assets deemed critical to restore and recover from a cyberattack on a company’s infrastructure in a timely manner.

Data Ingest: Rimage Data Solutions (RDS)

Most organizations have more data than they know exists let alone an understanding of where it is and how to manage it relative to GRC and retention policies. Rimage Data Solutions enables organizations to gather and ingest their digital assets from various devices onto multiple storage platforms.

Data Preservation & Archiving: Rimage Data Preservation (RDP)

Our data retention and preservation solution provides organizations with a data management approach that is age-resilient, reliable, cost-efficient, and secure. Implementing Rimage Data Preservation enables organizations to comply with regulatory demand and reduces the cost of preserving/maintaining data by over 70% with a high degree of certainty that the data will be available if it is ever needed. Open and custom API integration into back-office systems allows organizations to leverage industry products to offer operational solutions.

Data Archiving Solutions with Rimage Technology

Several third-party partners that have built and sold solutions for data archiving. The solutions have a variety of input devices, output destinations, integrations, and interfaces. For example, destinations can include: hard drives, NAS, Cloud, Tape, and Blu-Ray.

Q. What are the factors that affect the pricing of your products?

The primary factor in product pricing is supply chain management. Our products use technology and hardware components that are manufactured across the world, so being able to source quality components for manufacturing systems is vital.

Q. How do you source quality components for manufacturing systems for digital data distribution and archiving?

Many of our partners have been with us for 40 years. When we evaluate a new partner, we start by looking at proof of concepts so that we can assess the quality of their output and their overall process. We assess each function and the components that have been built to ensure that it meets our quality and standards requirements. We are continually working with our partners and suppliers to evaluate their capabilities, as well as their regulatory standards and compliance to ensure that they meet all of the requirements of each government around the world.

Q. Manufacturing for the tech segment can be time-consuming, especially to make in large quantities. How do you maintain the quality of your products?

We have centralized manufacturing in California, which serves as a hub for our quality control. So not only do we work with the suppliers of the original product component, but we’re also doing tests of the components that we design for the motherboard. We work through all the components that are required for that motherboard before we go to mass production – working with the suppliers, conducting regression testing, and more.

Q. What does the future hold for your company and its customers? Are exciting things on the way?

Since Rimage is based on data management, the possibilities are limitless. As a society, we are just at the start of figuring out how to get the most out of our data, while also keeping it safe from bad actors. It’s an incredibly exciting industry to be a part of. Rimage is also in a reimagining phase. We have this amazing legacy and work within innovative industries. Now it’s about how we bring our products to market in a way that helps businesses manage their data for the next 40 years.

Meet the leader behind the success of Rimage

As President and CEO of Rimage, Christopher Rence is a global security data protection expert with a stellar track record of leading transformation initiatives across global teams. He is a leading expert in global security data and inspires people through his high-integrity leadership and hands-on approach. He is a visionary and strategic leader with unmatched performance in technology and data security. A high-level problem solver, Rence has built cultures that promote out-of-the-box thinking and that elevate performance in technology and its processes.