Concurrent Computer Corporation

Last updated
Concurrent Computer Corporation
TypePublic
Nasdaq: CCUR
Industry Computer systems
Founded1985;39 years ago (1985)
Fate2017, pieces acquired by Battery Ventures and Vecima Networks
Headquarters
Key people
  • James K. Sims
  • Denis R. Brown
  • John Stihl
  • Corky Siegel
Products
  • Series 3200
  • Series 5000
  • Series 6000
  • Series 8000
  • iHawk
  • MediaHawk
Revenue$247 million (1987)
Number of employees
  • 1,700 (1985)
  • 2,800 (1988)
  • 1,250 (1993)
Website www.ccur.com

Concurrent Computer Corporation was an American computer company, in existence from 1985 to 2017, that made real-time computing and parallel processing systems. Its products powered a variety of applications including process control, simulators, data acquisition, and video-on-demand. It was based in Monmouth County, New Jersey, initially, and then later in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and Duluth, Georgia.

Contents

Origins and initial efforts

The company was created in November 1985 when the computing division of Perkin-Elmer, the Data Systems Group, was spun off as a separate company. [1] The computing group, which had started out as the company Interdata before Perkin-Elmer acquired it in 1974, [1] had been profitable with sales of $259 million, but had tended to have reduced visibility within the computing industry due to being owned by a diversified parent. [2] At first, the new company was a wholly owned subsidiary of Perkin-Elmer, but with the intentions of putting a minority ownership in the company up for a public stock offering. [1] This was subsequently done, with Perkin-Elmer retaining an 82 percent stake in Concurrent; [3] the remainder went on sale in February 1986 and opened at $20 per share. [4] The stock traded on the NASDAQ exchange. [4]

Promotional ceramic mug c. late 1980s, showing the company's original logo Concurrent Computer Corporation mug.jpg
Promotional ceramic mug c. late 1980s, showing the company's original logo

James K. Sims, who had been general manager of the computer unit within Perkin-Elmer, [2] became president and CEO of the new company. [1] It had a large presence in Monmouth County, New Jersey, with some 1,700 staff making it one of the county's largest private employers. [2] Its plant in Oceanport had 800 employees alone. [2]

By 1987, Concurrent had nine separate offices in various locations in Monmouth County. [5] Corporate headquarters had initially been Holmdel, but during 1987 moved to Tinton Falls. [5]

Concurrent Computer Corporation had engineering offices and sometimes its headquarters in this building (seen here in 2022) in Tinton Falls, New Jersey Front of former headquarters of Concurrent Computer Corporation.jpg
Concurrent Computer Corporation had engineering offices and sometimes its headquarters in this building (seen here in 2022) in Tinton Falls, New Jersey

The initial focus of Concurrent Computer Corporation was in the 32-bit superminicomputer market, with an offering that emphasized parallel processing. [1] Their oldest product was the Series 3200, which came from its Interdata heritage and was based around a proprietary discrete component processor that supported 8 sets of registers and was built using the AMD Am2900 bit-slice chip set. The 3200 Series ran the OS/32 real-time operating system. [6] Two newer products were the Series 5000, based on a Motorola 68020 processor, and the Series 6000, based on a Motorola 68030. [6] In these products, the company focused on the market for high-end, rapid-response applications. [3] Aircraft simulators were an especially important market. [7]

Many of Concurrent's customers were in the defense and aerospace industry. [8] Accordingly, Concurrent offered a line of compilers for the Ada programming language that at the time was often mandated for such applications. [6] The company's C3Ada product came out in 1987; it ran on OS/32 and was among the early wave of commercial products to get past the strenuous Ada Compiler Validation Capability (ACVC) validation suite. [9] The company's languages group investigated the challenges of implementing Ada, with its built-in tasking feature, on a real-time system with multiple processors, [7] and in how best the requirements of real-time systems could be expressed in the language. [10]

The Fortran programming language was perhaps the most popular choice for applications on the Concurrent platform. [9] Optimizing Fortran for a shared-memory multiprocessor presented special issues regarding do loops and cache thrashing, a subject that the compiler staff at Concurrent studied extensively. [11]

By 1988, there were some 2,800 employees in the company overall, [4] and at its peak, the Oceanport manufacturing facility would have nearly 1,000 people working at it. [12] Revenue for 1987 was $247 million. [4]

Merger with MASSCOMP

An announcement was made on August 1, 1988, [4] that there would be a merger between Concurrent Computer Corporation and the Massachusetts Computer Corporation (MASSCOMP). [13] Technically, MASSCOMP purchased Concurrent for $241 million and was the surviving company, even though Concurrent was more than three times the larger of the two. [3] [8] This "minnow-swallows-the-whale" style of merger was prevalent during the 1980s and in this case, as often happened in the era, it was largely financed by junk bonds. [8] As part of the deal, MASSCOMP bought out Perkin-Elmer's share in Concurrent. [3] Unusually, the merged entity kept the name Concurrent Computer Corporation and Sims remained as CEO of it. [3] The merged company's headquarters was the one used for Concurrent in New Jersey, [6] which was also somewhat atypical. [8] The transaction closed on September 27, 1988. [14]

This large building in Oceanport, New Jersey, was the site of Concurrent's manufacturing facility and sometimes its headquarters (seen here in 2022); it consisted of four interconnected structures that were built during the Interdata and Perkin-Elmer years Former manufacturing facility of Concurrent Computer Corporation.jpg
This large building in Oceanport, New Jersey, was the site of Concurrent's manufacturing facility and sometimes its headquarters (seen here in 2022); it consisted of four interconnected structures that were built during the Interdata and Perkin-Elmer years

The idea behind the merger was to use MASSCOMP's lower-end offerings in the real-time space to complement Concurrent's higher-end products. [3] In addition, MASSCOMP brought expertise in the Unix operating system, which was rapidly becoming the popular choice for these kind of system offerings. [13] The MASSCOMP flavor of Unix was called RTU, for Real-time Unix. [16] It was featured as the operating system on the Series 5000 and Series 6000 systems. [6]

As it happened, the merger was fraught with obstacles. [13] The debt load imposed by the acquisition proved difficult to reduce, a problem made worse by the advent of the early 1990s recession in the United States, and there were a series of layoffs in the Monmouth County facilities. [8] There were also severe clashes of company culture and dueling product development teams. [13] Finally, improved offerings in the real-time space by larger competitors such as IBM and Digital Equipment Corporation proved difficult to undercut. [13] As one industry analyst subsequently said, the merger "didn't produce anything but problems for Concurrent." [17] In 1990 there was a change at the CEO position at Concurrent, with Sims out and Denis R. Brown in. [8] Soon as well a turnaround expert had been brought in. [13] Another CEO switch happened in 1993, with John Stihl taking over. [17]

The company continued to be involved in the Ada language world during the 1990s. This included being a rapporteur during the Ada 9X definition process, [10] as well as participating in the definition of the Ada Semantic Interface Specification (ASIS). [18]

By the early 1990s, Concurrent had about 1,250 employees. [19] It put out the Series 8000 product, which was based on the MIPS R3000 processor with RTU running on it. [6] The company's major sales areas were in applications that included weather forecasting, air control, radar simulation, and financial trading. [19]

Merger with Harris Computer Systems

Due to repayments and a debt-for-equity swap, by 1995 the company's debt load had been reduced from $200 million to under $25 million. [17] A competitor at this point was Harris Computer Systems, [20] a real-time computer systems enterprise recently spun off from Harris Corporation. [21] In 1995, Harris Computer Systems, led by its chief executive E. Courtney "Corky" Siegel, looked to buy Concurrent Computer Corporation, but the discussions ended in acrimony. [17]

Negotiations resumed the following year, albeit in the opposite direction, and in June 1996, Concurrent acquired the high-performance computer business of Harris Computer Systems. [20] However, the corporate headquarters was moved from New Jersey to Harris's location of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. [20] Most of the rest of the New Jersey operations, which had been dwindling due to rounds of layoffs and employees leaving, soon followed. [12] As the Asbury Park Press wrote of the Oceanport facility, "The former headquarters of Concurrent Computer Corp. [is] a once bustling place that has been nearly emptied by corporate downsizing". [15] In July 1997, Concurrent sold the Oceanport building, although it still leasebacked a smaller manufacturing and servicing capability within it, [12] responsible for keeping going an older product line. [15]

In 1999, the headquarters of Concurrent was again moved, to Duluth, Georgia, in the Atlanta metropolitan area. [21] Now CEO of Concurrent, Siegel said the relocation was for better executive access to the rest of the country and for a better talent pool; a factory remained in Pompano Beach, Florida. [22] While Siegel wanted to emphasize the company's video-on-demand product, called MediaHawk, most of the company's $82 million in annual revenues still came from the real-time systems product line. [22]

By the early 2000s, Concurrent was continuing its focus on the video-on-demand market and was selling to companies such as AOL Time Warner and Cox Communications. [23] It also still had a presence in the defense industry, though, with Lockheed Martin as a customer. [23] Its real-time systems were run using RedHawk Linux  [ jp ], Concurrent's adaptation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for real-time requirements. [24] By this time, Concurrent's systems were based on the Intel/AMD processor architecture. [24] Technologies such as these were included in Concurrent's iHawk systems product. [25]

End

During 2017, the pieces of Concurrent Computer Corporation were sold off. In May 2017, the real-time systems business was acquired by the private equity firm Battery Ventures for $35 million. [26] The resulting division was named Concurrent Real-Time, which was later acquired for $166.7 million by Brüel & Kjær, a subsidiary of Spectris plc, in July 2021. [27] [28] In October 2017, the video content delivery and storage business was acquired by the Canadian telecommunications firm Vecima Networks for $29 million, [29] in a transaction that appears to have closed in very early 2018. [30]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Compaq</span> American information technology company

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital Research</span> Defunct American software company

Digital Research, Inc. was a privately held American software company created by Gary Kildall to market and develop his CP/M operating system and related 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit systems like MP/M, Concurrent DOS, FlexOS, Multiuser DOS, DOS Plus, DR DOS and GEM. It was the first large software company in the microcomputer world. Digital Research was originally based in Pacific Grove, California, later in Monterey, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Novell</span> 1980–2014 American multinational software and services company

Novell, Inc. was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi-platform network operating system known as Novell NetWare.

Convergent Technologies, Inc., was an American computer company formed by a small group of people who left Intel Corporation and Xerox PARC in 1979. Among the founders were CEO Allen Michels, VP Engineering Bob Garrow, head of marketing Kal Hubler, and operating system architect Ben Wegbreit. Convergent was primarily an OEM vendor with their computers resold by other manufacturers such as ADP, AT&T, Burroughs, Four-Phase Systems, Gould, Mohawk, Monroe Data Systems, NCR, and Prime. The company was purchased by Unisys in 1988.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Santa Cruz Operation</span> Software company based in Santa Cruz, California

The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. was an American software company, based in Santa Cruz, California, that was best known for selling three Unix operating system variants for Intel x86 processors: Xenix, SCO UNIX, and UnixWare.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Logica</span> Defunct multinational IT and management consultancy company

Logica plc was a multinational IT and management consultancy company headquartered in London and later Reading, United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PerkinElmer</span> American corporation focused on life science research

PerkinElmer, Inc., previously styled Perkin-Elmer, is an American global corporation that was founded in 1937 and originally focused on precision optics. Over the years it went into and out of several different businesses via acquisitions and divestitures; these included defense products, semiconductors, computer systems, and others. By the 21st century, PerkinElmer was focused in the business areas of diagnostics, life science research, food, environmental and industrial testing. Its capabilities include detection, imaging, informatics, and service. It produced analytical instruments, genetic testing and diagnostic tools, medical imaging components, software, instruments, and consumables for multiple end markets. PerkinElmer was part of the S&P 500 Index and operated in 190 countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Interdata 7/32 and 8/32</span> 32-bit minicomputers

The Model 7/32 and Model 8/32 were 32-bit minicomputers introduced by Perkin-Elmer after they acquired Interdata, Inc., in 1973. Interdata computers are primarily remembered for being the first 32-bit minicomputers under $10,000. The 8/32 was a more powerful machine than the 7/32, with the notable feature of allowing user-programmable microcode to be employed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MASSCOMP</span> Former computer manufacturer from the United States

The Massachusetts Computer Corporation (MASSCOMP) was a computer manufacturer based in Westford, Massachusetts. Originally conceived by C. Forbes Dewey of MIT and inventor Chester Schuler, it was founded formally in 1981. Its target market was real-time computing, with a focus on high-speed data acquisition. Its major innovation was that it created the first widely available computer product which was able to sample analog signals at one million samples per second and store the resulting data to disk continuously. Given the technology available at the time—Motorola 68000 series CPUs of only a few megahertz in speed and slow disk drives—this product represented quite a technological achievement.

Systems Engineering Laboratories was a manufacturer of minicomputers in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It was one of the first 32-bit realtime computer system manufacturers. Realtime computers are used for process control and monitoring.

Vecima Networks is a Canadian company that develops hardware and software for broadband access, content delivery, and telematics. It was founded in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and currently has offices in Saskatoon, Burnaby, Atlanta, London, Amsterdam, Tokyo, and is headquartered in Victoria. Vecima sells its products to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), system integrators, MSOs and other service providers.

Applied Biosystems is one of various brands under the Life Technologies brand of Thermo Fisher Scientific corporation. The brand is focused on integrated systems for genetic analysis, which include computerized machines and the consumables used within them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Interdata</span> Minicomputer company

Interdata, Inc., was a computer company, founded in 1966 by a former Electronic Associates engineer, Daniel Sinnott, and was based in Oceanport, New Jersey. The company produced a line of 16- and 32-bit minicomputers that were loosely based on the IBM 360 instruction set architecture but at a cheaper price. In 1974, it produced one of the first 32-bit minicomputers, the Interdata 7/32. The company then used the parallel processing approach, which uses more than one computer processor simultaneously to perform work on a problem. This helped in making real-time computing a reality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">HCR Corporation</span> Canadian software company

Human Computing Resources Corporation, later HCR Corporation, was a Canadian software company that worked on the Unix operating system and system software and business applications for it. Founded in 1976, it was based in Toronto.

Systime Computers Ltd was a British computer manufacturer and systems integrator of the 1970s and 1980s. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Systime become the second largest British manufacturer of computers, specializing in the minicomputer market.

Parallel Computers, Inc. was an American computer manufacturing company, based in Santa Cruz, California, that made fault-tolerant computer systems based around the Unix operating system and various processors in the Motorola 68000 series.

Thoth is a real-time, message passing operating system (OS) developed at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario Canada.

Chorus Systèmes SA was a French software company that existed from 1986 to 1997, that was created to commercialise research work done at the Institut national de recherche en informatique et en automatique (INRIA). Its primary product was the Chorus distributed microkernel operating system, created at a time when microkernel technology was thought to have great promise for the future of operating systems. As such Chorus was in the middle of many strategic partnerships regarding Unix and related systems. The firm was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 1997.

Harris Computer Systems Corporation was an American computer company, in existence during the mid-1990s, that made real-time computing systems. Its products powered a variety of applications, including those for aerospace simulation, data acquisition and control, and signal processing. It was based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. For twenty years prior, it had been the Harris Computer Systems Division of Harris Corporation, until being spun off as an independent company in 1994. Then in 1996, Harris Computer Systems Corporation itself was acquired by Concurrent Computer Corporation.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Computers: Deals: Perkin-Elmer floating its computer company". The Age. November 26, 1985. p. 49 – via Newspapers.com.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Hordt, Robert (November 14, 1985). "Perkin-Elmer frees computer unit". Asbury Park Press. pp. E11, E14 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Fisher, Lawrence M. (August 3, 1988). "Business People: Concurrent Chief to Get Top Jobs After Merger". The New York Times. p. D4.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Cavaluzzi, Joseph; Jackson, Jeanne (August 2, 1988). "Tinton Falls company announces merger plan". Asbury Park Press. pp. C8, C10 – via Newspapers.com.
  5. 1 2 Alper, Alan (July 6, 1987). "Concurrent restructures, slims staff". Computerworld. p. 76.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Ada Validated Compilers List". Lanham, Maryland: Ada Information Clearinghouse. July 1, 1992. pp. 7–8 (Section 1), 1 (Section 2).
  7. 1 2 Domitz, R. O. (October 1987). "Real-time Ada debugging". IRTAW '87: Proceedings of the first international workshop on Real-time Ada issues. pp. 18–20. doi: 10.1145/36821.36795 .
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Ward, John T. (September 16, 1990). "CEOs change, but problems remain". Asbury Park Press. pp. B1, B2 – via Newspapers.com.
  9. 1 2 Alper, Alan (April 6, 1987). "Real-time Ada bows". Computerworld. p. 13.
  10. 1 2 Burns, Alan; Eventoff, William (September–October 1991). "Asynchronism in Ada 9X". ACM SIGAda Ada Letters. XI (6): 66–68. doi:10.1145/122019.122023. S2CID   34820243.
  11. ↑ Venugopal, Sesh; Eventoff, William (June 1991). "Automatic transformation of FORTRAN loops to reduce cache conflicts". ICS '91: Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Supercomputing. pp. 183–193. doi: 10.1145/109025.109075 .
  12. 1 2 3 "Weekly Business: Region in Review: Company moving to complex". Asbury Park Press. July 13, 1997. p. B2 – via Newspapers.com.
  13. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Margolis, Nell (December 10, 1990). "Can Concurrent make a comeback?". Computerworld. pp. 103, 106.
  14. ↑ "Concurrent consolidation complete; factory workers needed". The Sunday Register. Shrewsbury, New Jersey. October 16, 1988. p. 7D – via Newspapers.com.
  15. 1 2 3 Fazzi, Raymond (October 9, 1996). "Concurrent will sell building". Asbury Park Press. pp. C1, C3 – via Newspapers.com.
  16. ↑ Russell, Channing H.; Waterman, Pamela J. (December 1987). "Variations on UNIX for parallel-processing computers". Communications of the ACM. 30 (12): 1048–1055. doi:10.1145/33447.33450. S2CID   7561881.
  17. 1 2 3 4 Munoz, Daniel J. (June 14, 1995). "Anatomy of a Failed Merger". NJBiz. Retrieved April 24, 2022.
  18. ↑ Colket, Currie; Barnes, Gary; Blake, Steve; Cooper, Dan; Jørgensen, Jesper; Roby, Clyde; Rittersdorf, Dan; Ryben, Sergey; Strohmeier, Alfred; Thomas, Bill (January–February 1997). "Architecture of ASIS: A tool to Support Code Analysis of Complex Systems". ACM SIGAda Ada Letters. XVII (1): 35–40. doi: 10.1145/249984.249991 . S2CID   37147893.
  19. 1 2 "Company News: Concurrent Computer to Expand Sales Force by 10%". The New York Times. Bloomberg News. April 21, 1993. p. D4.
  20. 1 2 3 Fazzi, Raymond (June 27, 1996). "Concurrent may make its move soon". Asbury Park Press. pp. C1, C6 – via Newspapers.com.
  21. 1 2 Lorek, L. A. (August 24, 1999). "Concurrent Moves HQ to Atlanta". South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
  22. 1 2 Clothier, Mark (June 12, 1999). "Video-on-demand unit of Florida firm moving to Duluth". The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. p. F2 – via Newspapers.com.
  23. 1 2 "Technology Briefing: Hardware: Concurrent Computer Shares Plunge". The New York Times. Bloomberg News. March 19, 2003. p. C5.
  24. 1 2 Morgan, Timothy Prickett (December 1, 2009). "Concurrent unhoods RedHawk Linux 5.4". The Register.
  25. ↑ "Concurrent Computer Corporation iHawk Systems Chosen By Eurocopter, an EADS company, For Training Simulators" (Press release). Bloomberg News. December 2, 2003.
  26. ↑ "Brief: Concurrent Computer sells real-time business segment to Battery Ventures". Reuters. May 15, 2017.
  27. ↑ Castia, Matteo (April 1, 2021). "Spectris Buys Concurrent Real-Time From Battery Ventures for $166.7 Million". The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company. Archived from the original on April 10, 2021.
  28. ↑ Gavine, Adam (July 16, 2021). "Spectris completes acquisition of Concurrent Real-Time". Vehicle Dynamics International. Mark Allen Group Limited. Archived from the original on May 9, 2022.
  29. ↑ "Vecima to Acquire Video Content Delivery & Storage Business from Concurrent" (Press release). GlobeNewsWire. October 16, 2017.
  30. ↑ "Vecima Closes Acquisition of Concurrent" (Press release). GlobeNewsWire. January 2, 2018.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.