Stratus Expands Fault-Tolerant Server Line

For a quarter of a century, Stratus Technologies Inc. has been making fault-tolerant servers known for high availability and reliability. Now the Maynard, Mass., company wants to use that expertise to expand its reach, transforming itself from vendor to expert in continuously available IT environments.

"While we are in the server business, my view of Stratus is were in the continuous-availability business," said Gregory Enriquez, senior vice president of worldwide sales for the company.

Stratus hopes to broaden its offerings by continuing to expand its line of industry-standard fault-tolerant servers running on Intel Corp. technology and by creating a services business. As the use of high-availability systems grows, so will demand for such services, Enriquez said.

The company will add to its portfolio of systems this week when it releases the ftServer 4600 system, the third generation of its servers for Microsoft Corp.s Windows Server 2003 operating system.

The four-way server, which runs Intels 3.6GHz, 64-bit-enabled Xeon chips, also features Stratus new FPGA (field programmable gateway array) chip set. Stratus fault-tolerant systems feature two sets of most components. The new chip set enables the coordination of processor operations and detects and isolates faults so they dont detract from server operations.

According to Sri Sridharan, the companys vice president of worldwide solution services, its the high-availability experience that will feed Stratus growing services group. In April, Stratus unveiled its CA Framework portfolio of systems and services aimed at the life sciences manufacturing space. The company will expand the offering to other industries it targets, such as financial services and telecommunications, Sridharan said.

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