Company History

At Alliance Storage Technologies, Inc., our primary focus is professional data archiving. Products are designed by industry veterans specifically for professional data archiving applications. Alliance’s product evolution is based upon a long history of optical technology evolving from the early 1980’s. Technology forerunners are the aristocracy of optical development including: Control Data Corp, OSI, Laser Magnetic Storage, Inc., Philips LMS, and more.

As the predecessor companies were merged and acquired throughout the years, employees have filtered through and followed the technology as it has progressed until finally resting with Alliance. Collectively, Alliance employees maintain a vast knowledge of the industry and product lines. Hence, the legacy of science and technology behind optical data archiving continues with the added excitement of new advancements and capabilities.

Keeping abreast of technology, Alliance continues the legacy with groundbreaking new products and features that ultimately result in newer and more efficient methods of archiving data, improved flexibility, and a greater level of customer satisfaction.

History

1986
Control Data Corp. and OSI combine to form Laser Magnetics Storage, Inc. (LMSI), a company focused on optical technology development. The LMS technology included optical media and Laser Drives using the ablative method of reading and writing to optical media. The company continued to develop LD technology starting with the LD1200 2GB media and drives. The next generation of LD technology, the LD4000, is developed between 1987 and 1990 with a capacity of 5.6GB.

1987
Plasmon, established in 1987 with headquarters based in UK, began producing optical drives and media for data storage then later introduced optical jukeboxes in the late 1980’s and beyond using Panasonic libraries and Sony’s Magneto Optical (MO) Write-Once-Read-Many (WORM) drives and media.

1990
Philips acquires Laser Magnetic Storage, Inc, becoming Philips LMS, located in Colorado Springs. Philips continued to develop the LD product line releasing the LD6000 with a capacity of 12GB and then the LD8000 with a capacity of 30GB. The LD series drives and media were integrated into FileNET OSAR and Cygnet data storage libraries as well as standalone applications.

1992
Plasmon offers Panasonic jukeboxes rebranded as Reflections based on Magneto Optical (MO) technology with a capacity of 940MB to 1.4GB.

1994
Plasmon acquires manufacturing company IDE located in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, that was producing data storage libraries. The manufacturing operation then becomes Plasmon IDE. The M Series libraries were released with capacities ranging from 52GB to 4.5TB in 1999. The D Series libraries with CD and DVD media with capacities ranging from 564GB to 20.4TB

1999
Plasmon acquires Colorado Springs-based Philips LMS, with that location now becoming Plasmon LMS. That same year in 1999, Plasmon released the first generation of phase change technology, the LD8000, with a 30GB capacity.

2000
By 2000, Plasmon products included the M Series with MO media at 9.1GB and the G Series direct attached library with the same media. The SCSI attached G Series libraries connected directly to a server and required third-party application software in order to interface with the library. Plasmon worked with many world class integrators and software vendors in order to ensure that the libraries were adaptable to any industry and application; consequently, the G Series achieved great popularity.

2002
Plasmon IDE was moved from Minnesota to Colorado Springs. The first generation of Ultra Density Optical (UDO) 30GB media and drives were introduced and referred to as UDO1. The G Series libraries were adapted to utilize MO media and drives, UDO1 media and drives, or both.

2003
Alliance Storage Technologies, Inc. (ASTI) was established in Colorado Springs, by Chris Carr, a previous Philips employee with many years of industry experience. The company became a value added reseller (VAR) for Plasmon and Hewlett Packard storage libraries while providing installation and maintenance support to its International customer base.

2005
New product developments by Plasmon include the UDO Archive Appliance (AA) Network Attached Storage (NAS) library. The new all-in-one appliance includes a Storage Management System (server) with RAID, and an operational software application combined with a UDO library. The initial Archive Appliance was released in 2007 with UDO1 media.

2007
Plasmon advances UDO with the release of UDO2 60GB drives and media. The Archive Appliance is further developed to include UDO2 drives and media having the backwards compatibility of reading UDO1 media in UDO2 drives. The G Series libraries have even greater backwards compatibility with mixed drive and media capability.

2008
By early 2008, Plasmon UK announced that it has filed the UK’s version of bankruptcy. Plasmon LMS in the US seeks funding from a private equity group, and restructures the operation in order to thwart financial difficulties. The company’s manufacturing operations and primary assets were located in Colorado Springs. However, by the end of 2008 the private equity group fell through with their investment forcing the company into receivership.

2009
Having nurtured a long- standing relationship with Plasmon and an in-depth knowledge of the product line, Alliance boldly steps forward and purchases the assets of Plasmon. Alliance’s intention is to continue development of the product line and provide maintenance and service support for Plasmon customers. Alliance recruits many of the local employees and other company professionals in order to retain the intellectual knowledge base and experience, many of whom have a vast amount of legacy industry experience having come from the aforementioned companies merged and acquired along the way. Key support areas for recruitment include manufacturing, engineering, key management and inside and outside sales positions.

2012
Alliance successfully fulfills its intentions and continues to develop the Plasmon product line with the 2012 release of the Archive Appliance Elite, a high-performance version of the Archive Appliance, while also introducing scalability options for the entry and midsized libraries.

2014
Alliance expands into a new headquarters in Colorado Springs with extended manufacturing capacity. Global operations continue with maintenance services and support for current product and legacy product lines. Further software developments have resulted in new software capabilities and features including Replication, Encryption, and Cloud Integrated Storage (CiS).

2015 and Beyond

Developments are underway for a new blue ray optical product line that stands on the shoulders of many prior generations of drive, media and library products augmented by new features that provide customers with entirely new options for data archiving.