Banyan Systems was founded in 1983 by Anand Jagannathan, a software engineer and mid-level manager at

Data General Data General Corporation was one of the first minicomputer firms of the late 1960s. Three of the four founders were former employees of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Their first product, 1969's Data General Nova, was a 16-bit minicompute ...

, Larry Floryan and David C. Mahoney. The company's distinctive logo was a

Banyan A banyan, also spelled "banian", is a fig that develops accessory trunks from adventitious prop roots, allowing the tree to spread outwards indefinitely. This distinguishes banyans from other trees with a strangler habit that begin life as a ...

tree and the logo's allegorical representation was of Banyan's product suite, Banyan VINES.

Jim Allchin James Edward Allchin (born 1951, Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States) is an American computer scientist, philanthropist and guitarist. He is a former Microsoft executive. He assisted Microsoft in creating many of the system platform component ...

, although not a founder, was one of the first employees hired. The company was headquartered in Westboro, Massachusetts, along the high-tech

I-495 Interstate 495 (I-495) is the designation for several Interstate Highways in the United States, all of which are related to Interstate 95, listed from south to north: * The Capital Beltway, a beltway around Washington, D.C., running through Virgin ...

corridor. Banyan was a privately held entity for nearly ten years after its incorporation. Later the company went public. Subsequently it went into decline, facing competition from

Novell NetWare NetWare is a discontinued computer network operating system developed by Novell, Inc. It initially used cooperative multitasking to run various services on a personal computer, using the IPX network protocol. The original NetWare product in ...

and even more so from

Microsoft Windows NT Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released on July 27, 1993. It is a processor-independent, multiprocessing and multi-user operating system. The first version of Win ...

. In 1997, the company changed its name to Banyan Worldwide. In October 1999 Banyan Worldwide became , an internet services company providing collaboration, security and identity management solutions. At the same time, it announced the obsolescence of VINES and other Banyan products. On October 24, 2003 announced that it would cease operations and its assets would be acquired by

Unisys Unisys Corporation is an American multinational information technology (IT) services and consulting company headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. It provides digital workplace solutions, cloud, applications, and infrastructure solutions, ...

References

{{reflist

External links

VINES Protocol
Defunct networking companies