Certance, LLC, was a

privately held company A privately held company (or simply a private company) is a company whose Stock, shares and related rights or obligations are not offered for public subscription or publicly negotiated in their respective listed markets. Instead, the Private equi ...

engaged in design and manufacture of computer

tape drive A tape drive is a data storage device that reads and writes data on a magnetic tape. Magnetic-tape data storage is typically used for offline, archival data storage. Tape media generally has a favorable unit cost and long archival stability. ...

s. Based in

Costa Mesa, California Costa Mesa (; Spanish language, Spanish for "coastal tableland") is a city in Orange County, California, United States. Since its incorporation in 1953, the city has grown from a semi-rural farming community of 16,840 to an urban area including ...

, Certance designed and manufactured drives using a variety of tape formats, including Travan, DDS, and

Linear Tape-Open Linear Tape-Open (LTO), also known as the LTO Ultrium format, is a magnetic tape data storage technology used for backup, data archiving, and data transfer. It was originally developed in the late 1990s as an open standards alternative to the pro ...

computer tape drives. Certance was one of the three original technology partners, (Certance,

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

, and

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...

), that created the Linear Tape-Open technology. In 2005, Certance was acquired by

Quantum Corporation Quantum Corporation is a data storage, management, and protection company that provides technology to store, manage, archive, and protect video and unstructured data throughout the data life cycle. Their products are used by enterprises, media ...

History

The company began as the removable storage systems division of

Seagate Technology Seagate Technology Holdings plc is an American Computer data storage, data storage company. It was incorporated in 1978 as Shugart Technology and commenced business in 1979. Since 2010, the company has been incorporated in Dublin, Ireland, with ...

. The division was formed in 1996 from storage companies Archive Corporation,

Irwin Magnetic Systems Irwin Magnetic Systems, Inc., also known as Irwin Magnetics, was a computer storage manufacturer active from 1979 to 1989 and based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was founded by Samuel Irwin in 1979 as Irwin International, Inc. The company's primary ...

, Cipher Data Products, and Maynard Electronics. In a restructuring involving Seagate Technology and

Veritas Software Veritas Technologies LLC is an American international data management company headquartered in Mountain View, California, Santa Clara, California. The company has its origins in Tolerant Systems, founded in 1983 and later renamed Veritas Softwa ...

, the division was spun off in 2000 into the independent company Seagate Removable Storage Systems. The company was the worldwide unit volume shipment leader in 2001, 2002, and 2003. The company name was changed to "Certance" in 2003. In 2004, Quantum Corporation announced plans to acquire Certance. The acquisition was completed in 2005, whereupon Certance ceased to exist as an independent company.

References

Computer storage companies Companies based in Costa Mesa, California Defunct computer hardware companies 1996 establishments in California 2005 establishments in California 2005 mergers and acquisitions Computer companies established in 1996 Computer companies disestablished in 2005 Defunct computer companies of the United States Tape-based computer storage {{compu-company-stub