Industry | Information Technology |
---|---|
Founded | 1997 |
Founder | Andrew Heller and Barry Thornton |
Headquarters | Cedar Park, Texas , USA |
Products | Computer hardware, software and services |
Parent | ClearCube Holdings |
Website | ClearCube.com |
ClearCube is a computer systems manufacturer based in Austin, Texas, owned by parent company ClearCube Holdings. The company became known for its blade PC products; [1] [2] it has since expanded its offerings to include desktop virtualization and VDI. It was founded in 1997 by Andrew Heller (former IBM Fellow) and Barry Thornton as Vicinity Systems. [3] [4]
In 2005, ClearCube derived about a third of its revenue from virtual infrastructure products sold into the financial services sector, [5] with the majority of the rest of the revenue coming from customers in the health-care and government sectors. [3] [4] Since 2005, ClearCube has continued to focus on virtualization-capable hardware and management software, which has led to strong revenue growth. In 2011, the company announced 50% year-over-year revenue growth due to the strong performance of its virtual desktop products. [6]
In 2011, ClearCube acquired Dallas-based Network Elites. [7] The acquisition brought roughly 25 additional employees to the company and expanded ClearCube's Cloud services capabilities.
Until 2005, IBM was a reseller of the entire product line of ClearCube. Afterwards, IBM bundled some of its own hardware with ClearCube's software, and also diversified its software offering to include Citrix and VMware products. [2] When IBM sold its PC division to Lenovo, the latter also began reselling ClearCube blades. [3] [8] Other major PC manufactures, like HP, also began to compete in the blade PC niche around this time. [8] [9] Other resellers of ClearCube products included Hitachi and SAIC. [3]
In 2008, ClearCube spun off its software division as VDIworks, and while VDIworks has developed additional OEM relationships, [10] the two companies remain closely associated in OEM partnership, and share the same investors and owners. [11] In January 2008, ClearCube also introduced products implementing Teradici's PC-over-IP protocol, including two dual DVI thin clients, the I9420 I/Port and C7420 C/Port, which connect to the blades using copper-based and fiber-optic Ethernet, respectively. [12]
Compaq Computer Corporation was an American information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced some of the first IBM PC compatible computers, being the second company after Columbia Data Products to legally reverse engineer the BIOS of the IBM Personal Computer. It rose to become the largest supplier of PC systems during the 1990s before being overtaken by Dell in 2001. Struggling to keep up in the price wars against Dell, as well as with a risky acquisition of DEC, Compaq was acquired for US$25 billion by HP in 2002. The Compaq brand remained in use by HP for lower-end systems until 2013 when it was discontinued. Since 2013, the brand is currently licensed to third parties for use on electronics in Brazil and India.
IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such computers were referred to as PC clones, IBM clones or IBM PC clones. The term "IBM PC compatible" is now a historical description only, since IBM no longer sells personal computers after it sold its personal computer division in 2005 to Chinese technology company Lenovo. The designation "PC", as used in much of personal computer history, has not meant "personal computer" generally, but rather an x86 computer capable of running the same software that a contemporary IBM PC could. The term was initially in contrast to the variety of home computer systems available in the early 1980s, such as the Apple II, TRS-80, and Commodore 64. Later, the term was primarily used in contrast to Apple's Macintosh computers.
A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term workstation has been used loosely to refer to everything from a mainframe computer terminal to a PC connected to a network, but the most common form refers to the class of hardware offered by several current and defunct companies such as Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, Apollo Computer, DEC, HP, NeXT, and IBM which powered the 3D computer graphics revolution of the late 1990s.
An original equipment manufacturer (OEM) is generally perceived as a company that produces parts and equipment that may be marketed by another manufacturer. The term is also used in several other ways, which causes ambiguity. It sometimes means the maker of a system that includes other companies' subsystems, an end-product producer, an automotive part that is manufactured by the same company that produced the original part used in the automobile's assembly, or a value-added reseller.
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NetApp, Inc. is an intelligent data infrastructure company that provides unified data storage, integrated data services, and cloud operations (CloudOps) solutions to enterprise customers. The company is based in San Jose, California. It has ranked in the Fortune 500 from 2012 to 2021. Founded in 1992 with an initial public offering in 1995, NetApp offers cloud data services for management of applications and data both online and physically.
Lenovo Group Limited, trading as Lenovo, is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in designing, manufacturing, and marketing consumer electronics, personal computers, software, business solutions, and related services. Products manufactured by the company include desktop computers, laptops, tablet computers, smartphones, workstations, servers, supercomputers, data storage devices, IT management software, and smart televisions. Its best-known brands include its ThinkPad business line of laptop computers, the IdeaPad, Yoga, LOQ, and Legion consumer lines of laptop computers, and the IdeaCentre, LOQ, Legion, and ThinkCentre lines of desktop computers. As of 2024, Lenovo is the world's largest personal computer vendor by unit sales.
AST Research, Inc., later doing business as AST Computer, was a personal computer manufacturer. It was founded in 1980 in Irvine, California, by Albert Wong, Safi Qureshey, and Thomas Yuen, as an initialism of their first names. In the 1980s, AST designed add-on expansion cards, and evolved toward the 1990s into a major personal computer manufacturer. AST was acquired by Samsung Electronics in 1997 but was de facto closed in 1999 due to a series of losses.
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A blade PC is a form of client or personal computer (PC). In conjunction with a client access device on a user's desk, the supporting blade PC is typically housed in a rack enclosure, usually in a datacenter or specialised environment. Together, they accomplish many of the same functions of a traditional PC, but they also take advantage of many of the architectural achievements pioneered by blade servers.
Phoenix Technologies Ltd. is an American company that designs, develops and supports core system software for personal computers and other computing devices. The company's products – commonly referred to as BIOS or firmware – support and enable the compatibility, connectivity, security and management of the various components and technologies used in such devices. Phoenix Technologies and IBM developed the El Torito standard.
Wyse Technology, Inc., or simply Wyse, was an independent American manufacturer of cloud computing systems. As of 2012, Wyse is a subsidiary of Dell. Wyse are best remembered for their video terminal line introduced in the 1980s, which competed with the market-leading Digital. They also had a successful line of IBM PC compatible workstations in the mid-to-late 1980s. But starting late in the decade, Wyse were outcompeted by companies such as eventual parent Dell. Current products include thin client hardware and software as well as desktop virtualization solutions. Other products include cloud software-supporting desktop computers, laptops, and mobile devices. Dell Cloud Client Computing is partnered with IT vendors such as Citrix, IBM, Microsoft, and VMware.
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Teradici Corporation was a privately held software company founded in 2004, which was acquired by HP Inc. in October 2021. Teradici initially developed a protocol (PCoIP) for compressing and decompressing images and sound when remotely accessing blade servers, and implemented it in hardware. This technology was later expanded to thin clients/zero clients for general Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. Teradici's protocol or hardware is used by HP, Dell-Wyse, Amulet Hotkey, Samsung, Amazon Web Services, Fujitsu, and VMware.
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