



Maynard-based Stratus Technologies celebrates its 30th anniversary on May 5th, and to mark the milestone, the maker of ultra-reliable servers asked its customers this question: who among you has been running a Stratus server the longest, with no unscheduled outages?





They found a Michigan manufacturing firm, Double Eagle Steel Coating Company , that has had the same Stratus server humming away since 1993, the start of Bill Clinton's first term in office. (The company-supplied photo at right shows how customers can swap out CPUs and other components while the server stays up.) I love the quote in Stratus' press release from IT engineer Phil Hogan at Double Eagle: "Around Y2K we thought it might be time to update the hardware, but we just didn't get around to it."





I was also curious whether there are any current Stratus employees who have been with the company since the start. I'm told there are at least three, all senior technical consultants: Otto Newman, Richard Barnes, and Paul Green.



Stratus, originally known as Stratus Computer, competed with Digital Equipment Corp. back in the good old days; once publicly-traded, it is now owned by private equity firms (and is based in DEC's old headquarters on Powdermill Road.)



