Tarantella was a line of products developed by a branch of the company
Santa Cruz Operation
The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. (usually known as SCO, pronounced either as individual letters or as a word) was an American software company, based in Santa Cruz, California, that was best known for selling three Unix operating system variants ...
(SCO) since 1993. In 2001, SCO was renamed Tarantella, Inc. as it retained only the division that produced Tarantella. On July 13, 2005, Tarantella, Inc. was purchased by
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...
for
US$
The United States dollar (Currency symbol, symbol: Dollar sign, $; ISO 4217, currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and International use of the U.S. dollar, several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introdu ...
25M. Tarantella exists now as a division of
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American Multinational corporation, multinational computer technology company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Co-founded in 1977 in Santa Clara, California, by Larry Ellison, who remains executive chairman, Oracle was ...
.
They produce and sell the ''
Oracle Secure Global Desktop'' range of
terminal services applications, formerly known as ''Sun Secure Global Desktop'', ''Tarantella'' and ''Canaveral iQ''.
History of the Tarantella product
In 1993,
Santa Cruz Operation
The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. (usually known as SCO, pronounced either as individual letters or as a word) was an American software company, based in Santa Cruz, California, that was best known for selling three Unix operating system variants ...
acquired
IXI Limited, a software company in
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...
,
UK, best known for its
X.desktop product. In 1994 it then bought
Visionware, of
Leeds
Leeds is a city in West Yorkshire, England. It is the largest settlement in Yorkshire and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds Metropolitan Borough, which is the second most populous district in the United Kingdom. It is built aro ...
, UK, developers of
XVision. In 1995 the development teams from IXI and Visionware were combined to form IXI Visionware, later the Client Integration Division of SCO.
The Client Integration Division was relatively independent of the rest of SCO. Specialising in software to integrate
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
and
UNIX
Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user 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, a ...
systems, it retained its own web site for some time and
ported its software to all major UNIX platforms including those of SCO's competitors.
In 1997 the Client Integration Division released the Vision97 (later Vision2K) family of products:
XVision Eclipse (a PC
X server X server may refer to:
* a display server for the X Window System
* X.Org Server, the X.Org Foundation's display server for the X Window System
* HPE Integrity Superdome X Server, a line of HPE Integrity Servers
HPE Integrity Servers is a ser ...
), VisionFS (an
SMB server for UNIX), TermVision (a
terminal emulator
A terminal emulator, or terminal application, is a computer program that emulates a video terminal within some other display architecture. Though typically synonymous with a shell or text terminal, the term ''terminal'' covers all remote term ...
for Microsoft Windows), SuperVision (centralised management of users from Windows), SQL-Retriever (
ODBC
In computing, Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) is a standard application programming interface (API) for accessing database management systems (DBMS). The designers of ODBC aimed to make it independent of database systems and operating systems. An ...
-compliant database connectivity software, later dropped) and TermLite (a lightweight version of TermVision). The VisionFS product was developed from scratch by the Cambridge development team; the other products were developed by the Leeds development team (mostly new versions of the existing Visionware products).
In parallel with Vision97 development, a separate development team began work in 1996 on a project codenamed Tarantella. The goal of this project was "any application, any client, anywhere": to provide access to applications of any type (hosted on
back-end servers) from any
client device that supported a
Java
Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...
-enabled
web browser
A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...
.
The first Tarantella web site, with live demos of simple applications, appeared in December 1996. The project codename stuck: it became the final product name. The first public release of Tarantella software was in November 1997. Later version 1.x releases supported more application types (such as Microsoft Windows applications) and client types (including native clients to remove the dependency on Java support), and added scalability and security features to better support larger enterprises and secure application access over the Internet.
The product was renamed Tarantella Enterprise II in late 1999, with a cut-down Tarantella Express product available on
Linux
Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...
systems. This renaming was a simple rebrand of the then-current 1.x release: no version 2.x software was released.
In April 2000 SCO reorganised into three divisions: the Server Software Division, the Professional Services Division and the Tarantella Division. At this time the web site moved from tarantella.sco.com to www.tarantella.com, reflecting the importance and independence of the Tarantella brand.
In November 2000 version 3.0 of the product was released, including a
major rewrite of much server-side code in the Java language. The product was rebranded as Tarantella Enterprise 3, with releases for Linux and major UNIX systems. Further 3.x releases followed in subsequent years, adding more integration features in competition with similar software from
Citrix.
History of the Tarantella company
In 2001, having sold the UNIX business, the company renamed itself after its remaining product line. However, despite growth in sales, the company consistently failed to meet sales targets, citing the downturn in tech markets. Despite a well-regarded main product, the company was never profitable. The company laid off staff in 2001, 2002 and 2003.
In 2003 the company lost compliance with regulations for continued listing on
NASDAQ
The Nasdaq Stock Market (; National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the U.S. by volume, and ranked second on the list ...
's SmallCap market. As a consequence it implemented a 1-for-5
reverse stock split
In finance, a reverse stock split or reverse split is a process by which shares of corporate stock are effectively merged to form a smaller number of proportionally more valuable shares.
The "reverse stock split" appellation is a reference to th ...
. At the same time it bought New Moon Systems, developers of Canaveral iQ, a terminal services application for Microsoft Windows that competed directly with Citrix.
The financial problems continued during 2003. In July, CEO Doug Michels stated that "isolated business practices" in the European Sales territory would affect revenues for the previous quarter. Later more discrepancies were found, causing a wider review of revenues for earlier quarters too. These reviews delayed the reporting of quarterly results, taking the company out of compliance with NASDAQ regulations once more.
In September 2003 the
Chairman of the Board
The chair, also chairman, chairwoman, or chairperson, is the presiding officer of an organized group such as a Board of directors, board, committee, or deliberative assembly. The person holding the office, who is typically elected or appointed by ...
(and former SCO CEO) Alok Mohan became acting
Chief Financial Officer
A chief financial officer (CFO) is an officer of a company or organization who is assigned the primary responsibility for making decisions for the company for projects and its finances; i.a.: financial planning, management of financial risks, ...
, replacing Randall Bresee. In the following month the company was
delisted
In corporate finance, a listing refers to the company's shares being on the list (or board) of stock that are publicly listed. Some stock exchanges allow shares of a foreign company to be listed and may allow dual listing, subject to conditions.
...
from NASDAQ and began trading "over the counter". Also in October the company received additional private investment.
On December 11, 2003 Doug Michels was replaced as CEO by Frank Wilde. On January 6, 2004 John Greeley was appointed as the new CFO.
More changes at the top of the organization followed in February: most members of the executive team were replaced. At the same time US$16 million of additional investment was received, and in March the company acquired Caststream, Inc., a provider of
collaboration software. (Note that Caststream was run by several members of the management team that Frank Wilde brought with him.) In April the company began to comply once more with financial reporting obligations, and was seeking relisting.
On May 10, 2004 the company rebranded. The former Tarantella Enterprise 3 and Canaveral iQ products became Secure Global Desktop, Enterprise Edition and Secure Global Desktop, Terminal Services Edition respectively.
On May 10, 2005 it was announced that
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...
would be acquiring Tarantella for $25 million cash, subject to regulatory and
shareholder
A shareholder (in the United States often referred to as stockholder) of corporate stock refers to an individual or legal entity (such as another corporation, a body politic, a trust or partnership) that is registered by the corporation as the ...
approval.
Sun posted a letter to Tarantella customers indicating the company would be wholly assimilated after 90 days; on July 13, 2005, it was announced the acquisition was completed.
In July, 2005 Sun licensed the Microsoft Windows Terminal Server based Tarantella product SGD-TSE (formerly New Moon Canaveral IQ) to the UK-based company ProPalms. ProPalms rebranded SGD-TSE as ProPalms TSE and ProPalms has released version 5.0 of the product. The ProPalms product directly competes as a lower cost alternative to Citrix Metaframe. Propalms assumed all of Tarantella's TSE customer obligations, and Tarantella's TSE development team joined Propalms.
In July 2006 Tarantella moved from its location in Santa Cruz. The building is now occupied by
Georgiana Bruce Kirby Preparatory School.
See also
*
Web desktop
References
;Sources
Oracle Secure Global Desktop;Notes
External links
Sun MicrosystemsSun Secure Global Desktop product home pageDocumentation Collection for version 4.31Propalms TSE
{{Sun Microsystems
Companies based in Santa Cruz County, California
Companies established in 1993
Software companies based in California
Sun Microsystems acquisitions
Sun Microsystems software
Unix history
Defunct software companies of the United States