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. Twenty-three engineers, mostly from the MIT Multics project and Data General, produced their initial product in just twenty-one 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.
The company's traditional markets have been financial services companies such as banks and credit card companies. 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).[5]
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 could 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 Emergent in 2009, and Emergent became known as Stratus Telecommunications. The two companies became separate entities (i.e., one is not the parent of the other). On July 16, 2010, as a reverse merger between YMax and VocalTec - all of the Stratus Telecommunications technologies are owned by VocalTec.
In 2012, Stratus acquired the assets, products, services, and intellectual property, of Marathon Technologies along with its customer base and channel-partner network.
Stratus Technologies, Inc. was acquired by Siris Capital Group on April 28, 2014.[6] On June 29, 2022, Smart Global Holdings announced the acquisition of Stratus from Siris for US$225 million.[7] On April 23, 2025, Stratus rebranded as "Penguin Solutions, Inc".[8] The stratus.com website redirects to https://www.penguinsolutions.com/.
