Concurrent Computer Corporation was an American computer company, in existence from 1985 to 2017, that made

real-time computing Real-time computing (RTC) is the computer science term for hardware and software systems subject to a "real-time constraint", for example from event to system response. Real-time programs must guarantee response within specified time constrai ...

and parallel processing systems. Its products powered a variety of applications including

process control An industrial process control in continuous production processes is a discipline that uses industrial control systems to achieve a production level of consistency, economy and safety which could not be achieved purely by human manual control. I ...

simulator A simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time. Simulations require the use of models; the model represents the key characteristics or behaviors of the selected system or process, whereas the s ...

data acquisition Data acquisition is the process of sampling signals that measure real-world physical conditions and converting the resulting samples into digital numeric values that can be manipulated by a computer. Data acquisition systems, abbreviated by the acro ...

, and

video-on-demand Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of o ...

. It was based in

Monmouth County, New Jersey Monmouth County () is a county located on the coast of central New Jersey. The county is part of the New York metropolitan area and is situated along the northern half of the Jersey Shore. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the county's population w ...

, initially, and then later in

Fort Lauderdale, Florida Fort Lauderdale () is a coastal city located in the U.S. state of Florida, north of Miami along the Atlantic Ocean. It is the county seat of and largest city in Broward County with a population of 182,760 at the 2020 census, making it the tenth ...

and

Duluth, Georgia Duluth is a city in Gwinnett County, Georgia, Gwinnett County, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia, United States. Located north of Interstate 85, it is approximately northeast of Atlanta. As of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, Duluth had a ...

Origins and initial efforts

The company was created in November 1985 when the computing division of

Perkin-Elmer PerkinElmer, Inc., previously styled Perkin-Elmer, is an American global corporation focused in the business areas of diagnostics, life science research, food, environmental and industrial testing. Its capabilities include detection, imaging, inf ...

, the Data Systems Group, was spun off as a separate company. The computing group, which had started out as the company

Interdata 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 t ...

before Perkin-Elmer acquired it in 1974, 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. 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. This was subsequently done, with Perkin-Elmer retaining an 82 percent stake in Concurrent; the remainder went on sale in February 1986 and opened at $20 per share. The stock traded on the

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...

exchange. James K. Sims, who had been general manager of the computer unit within Perkin-Elmer, became president and CEO of the new company. It had a large presence in

, with some 1,700 staff making it one of the county's largest private employers. Its plant in Oceanport had 800 employees alone. By 1987, Concurrent had nine separate offices in various locations in Monmouth County. Corporate headquarters had initially been Holmdel, but during 1987 moved to

Tinton Falls Tinton Falls is a borough in Monmouth County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough's population was 17,892, The initial focus of Concurrent Computer Corporation was in the

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in 32-bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calculation ...

superminicomputer A superminicomputer, colloquially supermini, is a high-end minicomputer. The term is used to distinguish the emerging 32-bit architecture midrange computers introduced in the mid to late 1970s from the classical 16-bit systems that preceded the ...

market, with an offering that emphasized parallel processing. Their oldest product was the Series 3200, which came from its Interdata heritage and was based around the proprietary 3280 processor and

OS/32 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 m ...

real-time operating system. Two newer products were the Series 5000, based on a

Motorola 68020 The Motorola 68020 ("''sixty-eight-oh-twenty''", "''sixty-eight-oh-two-oh''" or "''six-eight-oh-two-oh''") is a 32-bit microprocessor from Motorola, released in 1984. A lower-cost version was also made available, known as the 68EC020. In keepin ...

processor, and the Series 6000, based on a

Motorola 68030 The Motorola 68030 ("''sixty-eight-oh-thirty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor in the Motorola 68000 family. It was released in 1987. The 68030 was the successor to the Motorola 68020, and was followed by the Motorola 68040. In keeping with general ...

. In these products, the company focused on the market for high-end, rapid-response applications.

Aircraft simulator A flight simulator is a device that artificially re-creates aircraft flight and the environment in which it flies, for pilot training, design, or other purposes. It includes replicating the equations that govern how aircraft fly, how they rea ...

s were an especially important market. Many of Concurrent's customers were in the defense and aerospace industry. Accordingly, Concurrent offered a line of compilers for the

Ada programming language Ada is a structured, statically typed, imperative, and object-oriented high-level programming language, extended from Pascal and other languages. It has built-in language support for '' design by contract'' (DbC), extremely strong typing, explic ...

that at the time was often mandated for such applications. 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 Ada may refer to: Places Africa * Ada Foah, a town in Ghana * Ada (Ghana parliament constituency) * Ada, Osun, a town in Nigeria Asia * Ada, Urmia, a village in West Azerbaijan Province, Iran * Ada, Karaman, a village in Karaman Province, Tu ...

(ACVC) validation suite. 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, and in how best the requirements of real-time systems could be expressed in the language. The Fortran programming language was perhaps the most popular choice for applications on the Concurrent platform. Optimizing Fortran for a

shared-memory multiprocessor In computer science, shared memory is memory that may be simultaneously accessed by multiple programs with an intent to provide communication among them or avoid redundant copies. Shared memory is an efficient means of passing data between progr ...

presented special issues regarding

do loop In computer science a for-loop or for loop is a control flow statement for specifying iteration. Specifically, a for loop functions by running a section of code repeatedly until a certain condition has been satisfied. For-loops have two part ...

s and

cache thrashing In computer science, thrashing occurs when a computer's virtual memory resources are overused, leading to a constant state of paging and page faults, inhibiting most application-level processing. This causes the performance of the computer to d ...

, a subject that the compiler staff at Concurrent studied extensively. By 1988, there were some 2,800 employees in the company overall, and at its peak, the Oceanport manufacturing facility would have nearly 1,000 people working at it. Revenue for 1987 was $247 million.

Merger with MASSCOMP

An announcement was made on August 1, 1988, that there would be a merger between Concurrent Computer Corporation and the Massachusetts Computer Corporation (MASSCOMP). 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. 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 In finance, a high-yield bond (non-investment-grade bond, speculative-grade bond, or junk bond) is a bond that is rated below investment grade by credit rating agencies. These bonds have a higher risk of default or other adverse credit events ...

. As part of the deal, MASSCOMP bought out Perkin-Elmer's share in Concurrent. Unusually, the merged entity kept the name Concurrent Computer Corporation and Sims remained as CEO of it. The merged company's headquarters was the one used for Concurrent in New Jersey, which was also somewhat atypical. The transaction closed on September 27, 1988. 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. In addition, MASSCOMP brought expertise in the

Unix operating system Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and o ...

, which was rapidly becoming the popular choice for these kind of system offerings. The MASSCOMP flavor of Unix was called RTU, for Real-time Unix. It was featured as the operating system on the Series 5000 and Series 6000 systems. As it happened, the merger was fraught with obstacles. 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 The United States entered recession in 1990, which lasted 8 months through March 1991. Although the recession was mild relative to other post-war recessions, it was characterized by a sluggish employment recovery, most commonly referred to as a ...

, and there were a series of layoffs in the Monmouth County facilities. There were also severe clashes of company culture and dueling product development teams. Finally, improved offerings in the real-time space by larger competitors such as IBM and

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president unt ...

proved difficult to undercut. As one industry analyst subsequently said, the merger "didn't produce anything but problems for Concurrent." In 1990 there was a change at the CEO position at Concurrent, with Sims out and Denis R. Brown in. Soon as well a turnaround expert had been brought in. Another CEO switch happened in 1993, with John Stihl taking over. The company continued to be involved in the Ada language world during the 1990s. This included being a

rapporteur A rapporteur is a person who is appointed by an organization to report on the proceedings of its meetings. The term is a French-derived word. For example, Dick Marty was appointed ''rapporteur'' by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Euro ...

during the Ada 9X definition process, as well as participating in the definition of the

Ada Semantic Interface Specification The Ada Semantic Interface Specification (ASIS) is a layered, open architecture providing vendor-independent access to the Ada Library Environment. It allows for the static analysis of Ada programs and libraries. It is an open, published inter ...

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

Merger with Harris Computer Systems

Due to repayments and a

debt-for-equity swap Debt restructuring is a process that allows a private or public company or a sovereign entity facing cash flow problems and financial distress to reduce and renegotiate its delinquent debts to improve or restore liquidity so that it can continue ...

, by 1995 the company's debt load had been reduced from $200 million to under $25 million. A competitor at this point was

Harris Computer Systems 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 acquis ...

, a real-time computer systems enterprise recently spun off from

Harris Corporation Harris Corporation was an American technology company, defense contractor, and information technology services provider that produced wireless equipment, tactical radios, electronic systems, night vision equipment and both terrestrial and spaceb ...

. 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. 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. However, the corporate headquarters was moved from New Jersey to Harris's location of

. Most of the rest of the New Jersey operations, which had been dwindling due to rounds of layoffs and employees leaving, soon followed. As the ''

Asbury Park Press The ''Asbury Park Press'' is a daily newspaper in Monmouth and Ocean counties of New Jersey and has the third largest circulation in the state. It has been owned by Gannett since 1997. Its reporting staff has been awarded numerous national hon ...

'' wrote of the Oceanport facility, "The former headquarters of Concurrent Computer Corp. sa once bustling place that has been nearly emptied by corporate downsizing". In July 1997, Concurrent sold the Oceanport building, although it still leased back a smaller manufacturing and servicing capability within it, responsible for keeping going an older product line. In 1999, the headquarters of Concurrent was again moved, to

, in the

Atlanta metropolitan area Metro Atlanta, designated by the United States Office of Management and Budget as the Atlanta–Sandy Springs–Alpharetta, GA Metropolitan Statistical Area, is the most populous metropolitan statistical area in the U.S. state of Georgia and the ...

. 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 Pompano Beach ( ) is a city in Broward County, Florida, United States. It is located along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, just north of Fort Lauderdale. The nearby Hillsboro Inlet forms part of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. As of the 2020 ...

. 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. By the early 2000s, Concurrent was continuing its focus on the

market and was selling to companies such as

AOL Time Warner Warner Media, LLC ( traded as WarnerMedia) was an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate. It was headquartered at the 30 Hudson Yards complex in New York City, United States. It was originally established in 1972 by ...

and

Cox Communications Cox Communications, Inc. (also known as Cox Cable and formerly Cox Broadcasting Corporation, Dimension Cable Services and Times-Mirror Cable) is an American digital cable television provider, telecommunications and home automation services. It i ...

. It also still had a presence in the defense industry, though, with

Lockheed-Martin The Lockheed Martin Corporation is an American aerospace manufacturer, aerospace, military, arms, defense, information security, and Technology company, technology corporation with worldwide interests. It was formed by the Horizontal integrati ...

as a customer. Its real-time systems were run using , Concurrent's adaptation of

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a commercial open-source Linux distribution developed by Red Hat for the commercial market. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is released in server versions for x86-64, Power ISA, ARM64, and IBM Z and a desktop version ...

for real-time requirements. By this time, Concurrent's systems were based on the Intel/AMD processor architecture. Technologies such as these were included in Concurrent's iHawk systems product.

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 Battery Ventures is an American technology-focused investment firm. Founded in 1983, the firm makes venture-capital and private-equity investments in markets across the globe from offices in Boston, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Israel and Lon ...

for $35 million. The resulting division was named Concurrent Real-Time, which was later acquired for $166.7 million by

Brüel & Kjær Brüel & Kjær (Sound and Vibration Measurement A/S) was a Danish multinational engineering and electronics company headquartered in Nærum, near Copenhagen. It was the largest producer in the world of equipment for acoustic and vibrational mea ...

, a subsidiary of Spectris plc, in July 2021. In October 2017, the video content delivery and storage business was acquired by the Canadian telecommunications firm Vecima Networks for $29 million, in a transaction that appears to have closed in very early 2018.

References

External links

*
Official website of Concurrent Real-Time
nbsp;– post-2017 products site
"Concurrent Computer Corporation", ''International Directory of Company Histories'', c. 2005, as hosted at Encyclopedia.com

at

Syracuse University Syracuse University (informally 'Cuse or SU) is a Private university, private research university in Syracuse, New York. Established in 1870 with roots in the Methodist Episcopal Church, the university has been nonsectarian since 1920. Locate ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Concurrent Computer Corporation Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies 1985 establishments in New Jersey 2017 disestablishments in Georgia (U.S. state) 1988 mergers and acquisitions 1996 mergers and acquisitions 2017 mergers and acquisitions Companies based in Monmouth County, New Jersey Companies based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida Companies based in Duluth, Georgia Manufacturing companies established in 1985 Manufacturing companies disestablished in 2017 Computer companies established in 1985 Computer companies disestablished in 2017 Ada (programming language) Unix history Linux companies