Editing Stratus Technologies

{{Short description|American computer manufacturer}}
{{Multiple issues|
{{More citations needed|date=September 2014}}
{{advert|date=April 2015}}
}}

{{Infobox company
| name = Stratus Technologies, Inc.
| logo = Stratus Technologies Logo.svg
| type = [[Privately held company|Private]]
| industry = Information Technology
| founded = {{Start date and age|1980}}
| key_people = 
| products = fault tolerant computer hardware and software
| owner = 
| homepage = {{URL|https://www.stratus.com/|Stratus.com}}
}}

'''Stratus Technologies, Inc.''' is a major producer of [[fault tolerance|fault tolerant]] computer servers and software. The company was founded in 1980 as Stratus Computer, Inc. in [[Natick, Massachusetts]], and adopted its present name in 1999. The current CEO and president is Dave Laurello. The founder of Stratus was Bill Foster, who was CEO until Stratus was acquired by Ascend Communications in 1999. Prior to 2022, Stratus Technologies, Inc. was a privately held company, owned solely by [[Siris Capital Group]]. The parent company, Stratus Technologies Bermuda Holdings, Ltd., was incorporated in Bermuda. In 2022, the company was acquired by [[Smart Global Holdings]] (SGH) and currently operates within SGH's [[Intelligent Platform Solutions]] (IPS) business.
 
Stratus Computer was a Marlborough, Massachusetts, based producer of fault-tolerant [[minicomputer]]s. It competed with computers from [[Tandem Computers]] and to a lesser extent [[Digital Equipment Corporation]]'s [[VAX]].

Starting in 1983, its computers were resold worldwide by Stratus' own sales force as well as partners such as [[Olivetti]] under the CPS/32 ("Continuous Processing System") brand.<ref>{{cite journal |title=Canberra AUUG Programme |journal=Australian Unix Systems User Group Newsletter |date=October 1986 |volume=7 |issue=1 |page=11 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vy6q43RE80IC&pg=PA11}}</ref> Then, from 1985 to 1993, its computers were resold by [[IBM]] under the IBM System/88 brand.<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~david/papers/ibmsj1987_stratus.pdf |title=The structure of System/88, a fault-tolerant computer |author=E. S. Harrison, E. J. Schmitt |journal=IBM Systems Journal |volume=26 |issue=3 |year=1987 |pages=293–318 |accessdate=27 December 2014 |doi=10.1147/sj.263.0293 }}</ref><ref name="Connolly1985">{{citation|last=Connolly|first=James|title=IBM unwraps fault-tolerant processor line|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YcB6jeWo2VcC&pg=PA1|volume=19|date=1 April 1985|publisher=IDG Enterprise|page=1|issn=0010-4841|work=Computerworld|issue=13}}</ref>  The company is now based in [[Maynard, Massachusetts]].

==History==
Stratus shipped its first computer in February 1982,  21 months after its founding.  The customer was the West Lynn Creamery, located in nearby [[Lynn, Massachusetts]].

The company was founded in 1980 by Bill Foster, Bob Freiburghouse, and Gardner Hendrie.  In 1974 Bill briefly worked with the founders of the first fault tolerant company, Tandem Computers.  That experience motivated him to start Stratus, and use new 32-bit microprocessor technology to compete against them.  Bill knew Freiburghouse and Hendrie from his work experience at Data General.  They raised $1.7 million venture capital dollars in May 1980. 23 engineers, mostly from the MIT Multics project and Data General, produced their initial product in just 21 months, and delivered it to a local company, the West Lynn Creamery.  The owners of West Lynn insisted that they be allowed to purchase stock in Stratus, indicating their confidence in the company.  Stratus went public in 1983.

For a full history of Stratus visit www.teamfoster.com, a computer history website that covers not only Stratus but Bill Foster's experiences at Hewlett Packard and Data General.

The company's traditional markets have been financial services companies such as banks and [[payment card industry|credit card companie]]s. Beginning in the 1990s, the company moved into the telecommunications industry, particularly in the area of network management and custom services. In time, its telecommunications revenues surpassed those from enterprise computing. This led to a [[buyout]] of the company by [[Ascend Communications]] in 1998 (later acquired by [[Lucent Technologies]]).<ref>{{cite news |title=Stratus users voice uncertainty — Acquisition leaves nontelco users in limbo |first=Jaikumar |last=Vijayan |newspaper=Computerworld |date=10 August 1998 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pmkOuR7Q15gC&pg=PT21}}</ref>

The enterprise server portion of the business was of little interest to Ascend and that portion was spun off in a [[management buyout]] in 1999, with funding from international investment firm, [[Investcorp]].  The company was named Stratus Technologies, Inc.

In the second quarter of 2002, Lucent sold the telecom product lines that originally came from Stratus to [[Platinum Equity]], a buyout firm based in Los Angeles. That unit was eventually named Cemprus LLC.  Stratus purchased Cemprus in 2003. It is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Stratus. This acquisition gave Stratus the SS7 signaling software for phone networks and intelligent gateway software so that traditional and IP voice equipment are able to communicate. This software can be used to support higher-level telephony applications such as calling-card and toll-free phone number services.

In 2006, Stratus purchased Emergent Network Solutions of Allen, Texas. Stratus sold off Emergent in 2009, and Emergent is now known as Stratus Telecommunications.  The two companies are now separate entities.  One is not the parent of the other. On July 16, 2010, as a reverse merger between [[MagicJack, LP|YMax]] and VocalTec -  all of the Stratus Telecommunications technologies are owned by [[VocalTec]].{{citation needed|date=September 2021}}

In 2012, Stratus acquired the assets, products, services, and intellectual property of [[Marathon Technologies]] along with its customer base and channel-partner network.

Now privately held, Stratus Technologies, Inc. was acquired by [[Siris Capital Group]] on April 28, 2014.<ref name="siris-acq">''http://www.stratus.com/About/News/2014/Siris-and-Stratus-Close''</ref> On 29 June 2022 Smart Global Holdings announced the acquisition of Stratus from Sirus for US$225 million.<ref>[https://ir.smartm.com/news/news-details/2022/SGH-to-Acquire-Stratus-Technologies/default.aspx Company press release]</ref>

==Products and customers==
Its legacy product line was originally based on [[Motorola]] [[MC68000]] processors (FT and XA series), and then migrated to [[Intel i860]] processors (XA/R series), then to [[Hewlett-Packard]]'s [[PA-RISC]] processors (Continuum series), and finally to [[Intel Xeon]] processors (V Series).  That line runs the [[Stratus VOS|VOS]] operating system, which originally had many features inspired by or derived from [[Multics]]. Other operating systems supported on the legacy platforms (XA/R, Jetta / Continuum)—[[HP-UX]] and a home-grown UNIX product called FTX (Fault-Tolerant UNIX)—are supported but no longer actively sold.

In June 2002, Stratus introduced the ftServer line of Intel-based servers, running Microsoft Windows 2000 and higher. The Stratus ftServer line sold today supports Windows Server, VMware vSphere, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://resource.stratus.com/datasheet/ftserver/ | title=No Unplanned Downtime &#124; High Availability Solutions Stratus ftServer }}</ref> The company sells models of ftServer designated as entry-level, mid-range and enterprise-class fault tolerant servers.

The company began offering Stratus Avance software in June 2008, a high availability product with virtualization built in. Avance runs on two general-purpose x86 servers and allows deployment of applications across high-availability virtual machines, freeing up existing x86 servers. The two servers comprising the Avance high-availability platform may be separated by up to three miles for purposes of disaster recovery and business continuity. Avance is intended to serve small-to-medium size businesses' need for affordable and simple high availability and virtualization.

Stratus has a large presence in [[Maynard, Massachusetts]], its U.S. headquarters, and in [[Phoenix, Arizona]], as well as several worldwide offices, in locations such as the [[UK]], the [[Netherlands]], [[South Africa]], [[France]], [[Germany]], [[Italy]], [[Spain]], [[Australia]], [[New Zealand]], [[Singapore]], [[Hong Kong]], [[China]], [[Japan]] and  [[India]].

The company has a vast customer base, but popular types of its customers include banks and credit unions, emergency response centers (such as 911 in the USA), police departments, fire departments, hospitals, clinics, governments, credit card companies, stock exchanges, telcos/phone companies and Internet providers.

==References==
{{reflist}}
www.teamfoster.com

==External links==
*[http://www.stratus.com/ Stratus company homepage]

[[Category:Companies based in Maynard, Massachusetts]]
[[Category:Computer companies of the United States]]
[[Category:Computer hardware companies]]
[[Category:Computer systems companies]]
[[Category:Unix variants]]
[[Category:Fault-tolerant computer systems]]
[[Category:Private equity portfolio companies]]