In short
Who Revolution Data Systems is
Revolution Data Systems is a records company that works almost entirely with government. We were founded in May 2015 in Abita Springs, Louisiana, and we are still privately held by the people who started it. We run two production facilities of our own: high-volume scanning and indexing in Abita Springs, and a 20,000 square foot preservation lab in Dallas that opened in 2024. We employ more than 80 full-time people.
Roughly 1,000 of the 3,100 counties in the United States have sent us records, and we have captured more than 100 million images. We do not sell a platform you have to move onto, and we do not hand the work to a vendor you never meet.
The company
What we are, in numbers
Timeline
How we got here
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2015
Founded in Abita Springs, Louisiana
Revolution Data Systems opened in May 2015, doing backfile conversion for government agencies across the Gulf South. We built our own production floor rather than renting capacity from someone else, and Abita Springs has been home ever since. We have never had to pivot toward government work. It is where we began and it is still almost all of what we do.
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2019
Louisiana, nearly whole
Within four years we were working with 60 of Louisiana's 63 parishes. Almost none of that came from advertising. It came from clerks recommending us to other clerks, which is still how most of our work arrives.
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2024
Texas, and a lab that serves the country
Texas counties are particular about who handles their records, so we did not sell there until we had people and a facility in the state. We opened in Dallas with a 20,000 square foot preservation lab. We put it in Texas because there is a great deal of preservation work there, but the lab was never meant to be a Texas facility. Fragile volumes now arrive from across the country, and deacidification, repair and rebinding happen under our own roof rather than at a third party.
Today we are more than 80 people with a national footprint that stretches coast to coast. More than 100 million images later, we are still growing. The footprint has changed. The way we work has not.
Facilities
Where the work happens
Two production facilities, both ours, both staffed by our own people. Records reach them from counties across the country, and we have completed projects from California to Vermont.
Abita Springs, Louisiana
Scanning and indexing
High-volume scanning and indexing for bound volumes, microfilm, microfiche, aperture cards and large-format maps. Records are tracked in and out, and the work is done by our own staff in our own building.
Dallas, Texas
Nationwide preservation lab
A 20,000-square-foot preservation lab that opened in 2024. Deacidification, repair and rebinding for volumes too fragile to scan as they are. This location serves as our nationwide preservation and scanning center, with fragile records arriving from across the country.
Leadership
Still led by the people who built it
Revolution Data Systems has been run by the same people since it started. All three have been here since 2015.
Brant Rathe
President
Founded RDS in 2015 and has led it since. Records and information management runs three generations deep in his family, back to a grandfather who scanned microfilm for the US military in the 1950s. Before RDS he spent more than a decade selling and running conversion services across the Southeast.
Aaron Riddle
VP, Sales and Marketing
Leads sales and marketing at RDS. One of the company's earliest people, he joined in 2015 and worked alongside Brant at The Windward Group before that. More than a decade of helping county offices figure out what a records project should cost and how to get it approved.
William Collins
VP, Operations & Technology
Runs production and technology across both facilities, and has been with RDS since 2015. Thirty years building document imaging and records systems across government, legal, healthcare and manufacturing. If your project has a schedule, William owns whether it holds.
Your point of contact
The people you would actually work with
You will not be handed to a call centre. These are the people who scope projects, answer questions during procurement, and stay on the account after the work starts.
Come see where your records would be handled.
If you are evaluating vendors, we will host a visit to either facility. Bring your IT director. Bring a commissioner. Most of what separates records vendors is only visible on a production floor.
Talk to the person in your area