Stratus Readies a Fault-Tolerant Linux Product

By Bill Claybrook
http://aberdeen.com/ab_company/bios/claybrook.htm

September 11, 2003

In 1987, I went to work at Stratus Computer and several months later became manager of a newly formed DBMS/OLTP department. Stratus was the best place that I ever worked when I was a software manager. I recently spent some time at the company, now Stratus Technologies, in Maynard, MA.

A couple of years ago Stratus began shipping Windows-based, fault-tolerant platforms with better than "five-nines" uptime - successful products for the company. Stratus still ships its proprietary VOS operating system. The company's markets include banking, telecommunications, and manufacturing.

So why am I writing about Stratus? Sometime next year, Stratus will put its fault-tolerant Linux platform in the hands of users. The primary target market: telecommunications. Stratus will likely be first to market with a fault-tolerant Linux platform; I do not know of any other company that is developing such a product. This is great news for Stratus and the Linux community. Linux will begin to replace Unix in telecommunications with Stratus' lower price/superior performance 32-bit Intel processor-based machines. And I expect Linux will dominate [ http://aberdeen.com/ab_abstracts/2003/06/06030013.htm ] the market segment in a few years. (I invite users and suppliers to learn how to participate in my current research project, How Fast is Linux Replacing Unix? [ http://aberdeen.com/ab_company/hottopics/linuxvunix/default.htm ] )

Stratus has gone from a high-flying public company in the late-1980's and early-1990's to a private company. I expect fault-tolerant Linux to be a big winner for them.

2:05 ET

Copyright 2003