Stratus Computer Inc is probably best known as the company that gives Tandem Computers Inc a serious run for its money in the fault-tolerant systems market. But it is trying to alter its profile through its wholly-owned software subsidiary, S2 Systems Inc. S2 is different, claimed Steve Canning, manager of distributed operations in the UK, because it is part of a hardware company offering hardware-independent software. Dallas, Texas-headquartered S2 was formed when Stratus merged two of its software subsidiaries, Shared Systems Corp and SoftCom Systems Inc at the start of the year (CI No 2,566). Its main market areas are banking – both retail and wholesale – securities, retail and health care. Hard on their heels are travel and transport, telecommunications and gaming. Though new, S2 cannot be called a start-up company, with projected revenues this year of $75m, which the company predicted would rise to $150m by 1997. At present over 80% of revenues come from financial services. This year, revenues from outside the US make up 42% of the total, but this will rise to just over half in 1996, S2 says. It intends to pursue an agressive acquisitions policy to fill in certain holes in its product line, according to Scot Anderson, regional director for Europe, Africa and the Middle East. But he was vague as to where these holes might be. Thus far, the product line is headed by ON/2, the credit and debit card processing system that the company claims is installed at more than 300 sites around the world. Despite the company’s claim to be an open systems supplier, ON/2 runs only under proprietary Stratus VOS operating system, although support for further unspecified operating systems is also promised.
Up to 70 different protocols
Network Express is the basis for a range of products linking various systems, application development tools, devices and database applications into a transaction processing network. Network Express itself runs under Unix on IBM Corp’s RS/6000 system, as well as two proprietary Stratus systems. It can link up to 70 different protocols together, claimed Canning. He also claimed that the system developed using Network Express for American Airlines was the largest reservation system in the world. The company has worldwide distribution rights for Mint, a financial message switching system for the routing, reformatting and monitoring of payment and settlement transactions. OpenTrademark is a wholesale banking management system that runs under Sun Microsystems Inc and Hewlett-Packard Co Unixes, as well as AIX/6000s. It is also designed for use with Sybase Inc’s relational database and its PowerBuilder development tool. The Tcam Integrated Settlement System is a suite of applications supporting trading and settlement of equities and other securities, running under various Unix variants, as well as Digital Equipment Corp’s Alpha and personal computer operating systems. S2 still has a bit of reorganising to complete. According to Anderson, there was a degree of overlap between some of its products, mostly between ON/2 and Network Express, and even some competition. He emphasised that the company would not settle for organic growth alone. Acquisitions and further alliances will be the order of the day. The number of markets will grow, as well as the number of products, the company said. Headquarters for Europe, Middle East and Africa are in London, with other offices in Edinburgh and Keighley, Yorkshire. There are six other offices in continental Europe. S2 products are also distributed in South Africa, eastern Europe and Greece.
