Tandem Computers

Tandem Computers was founded in 1974 by James Treybig who saw the market need for fault tolerance in online transaction processing systems while running a marketing team for Hewlett-Packard 's HP 3000 computer division but HP was not interested in developing for this niche. He then joined the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins and developed the Tandem business plan there. Treybig pulled together a core engineering team hired away from the HP 3000 division. Their business plan called for systems that had no outages and never lost or corrupted data. These were modular in a way that was safe from all "single-point failures" yet would be only marginally more expensive than conventional non-fault-tolerant systems. They would be less expensive and support more throughput than some existing ad-hoc toughened systems that used redundant but usually required "hot spares".

Each engineer was confident they could quickly deliver their own part of this complex design but doubted that others' areas could be worked out. The parts of the hardware and software design that did not have to be different were largely based on incremental improvements to the familiar hardware and software designs of the HP 3000. Many subsequent engineers and programmers also came from HP. Tandem headquarters in Cupertino, California, were a quarter mile away from the HP offices. Initial venture capital investment in Tandem Computers came from Tom Perkins, who was formerly a general manager of the HP 3000 division.

The business plan included detailed ideas for building a unique corporate culture reflecting Treybig's values.

The design of the initial Tandem/16 hardware was completed in 1975, and the first system shipped to Citibank in May 1976.

The company enjoyed uninterrupted exponential growth through 1983. Inc. magazine ranked Tandem as the fastest-growing public company in America. By 1996, Tandem was a $2.3 billion company employing approximately 8,000 people worldwide.

Other product lines

Rainbow

In 1980–1983, Tandem attempted to re-design its entire hardware and software stack to put its NonStop methods on a stronger foundation than its inherited HP 3000 traits. Rainbow's hardware was a 32-bit register-file machine that aimed to be better than a Digital Equipment Corporation VAX. For reliable programming, the main programming language was "TPL", a subset of Ada. At that time, programmers barely understood how to compile Ada to unoptimized code. There was no migration path for existing NonStop system software coded in TAL. The OS, database and Cobol compilers were entirely redesigned. Customers would see it as a totally disjoint product line requiring all-new software from them. The software side of this project took much longer than planned. The hardware was already obsolete and outperformed by TXP before its software was ready, resulting in the Rainbow project being abandoned. All subsequent efforts emphasized upward compatibility and easy migration paths.

Development of Rainbow's advanced client/server application development framework called "Crystal" continued awhile longer and was spun off as the "Ellipse" product of Cooperative Systems Incorporated.

Dynamite PC

In 1985, Tandem attempted to grab a piece of the rapidly growing personal computer market with its introduction of the MS-DOS based Dynamite PC/workstation. Numerous design compromises (including a unique 8086-based hardware platform incompatible with expansion cards of the day and extremely limited compatibility with IBM-based PCs) relegated the Dynamite to serving primarily as a smart terminal. It was quietly and quickly withdrawn from the market.

The company in 1986 introduced the 6AT, an IBM PC AT-compatible computer. Tandem only sold the 6AT to existing customers; "we are not going to go out and innovate", it said.

Acquisition by Compaq, attempted migration to Alpha

Jimmy Treybig remained CEO of the company he founded until a downturn in 1996. The next CEO was Roel Pieper, who joined the company in 1996 as president and CEO. Re-branding to promote itself as a true Wintel (Windows/Intel) platform was conducted by its in-house brand and creative team led by Ronald May, who later went on to co-found the Silicon Valley Brand Forum in 1999. The concept worked, and shortly thereafter the company was acquired by Compaq.

Compaq's x86-based server division was an early outside adopter of Tandem's ServerNet/InfiniBand interconnect technology. In 1997, Compaq acquired the Tandem Computers company and NonStop customer base to balance Compaq's heavy focus on personal computers (PCs). In 1998, Compaq also acquired the much larger Digital Equipment Corporation and inherited its DEC Alpha RISC servers with OpenVMS and Tru64 Unix customer bases. Tandem was then midway in porting its NonStop product line from MIPS R12000 microprocessors to Intel's new Itanium Merced microprocessors. This project was restarted with Alpha as the new target to align NonStop with Compaq's other large server lines. But in 2001, Compaq terminated all Alpha engineering investments in favor of the Itanium microprocessors, before any new NonStop products were released on Alpha.

Acquisition by Hewlett-Packard, TNS/E migration to Itanium

In 2001, Hewlett-Packard similarly made the choice to abdicate its successful PA-RISC product lines in favor of Intel's Itanium microprocessors that HP helped to design. Shortly thereafter, Compaq and HP announced their plan to merge and consolidate their similar product lines. This contentious merger became official in May 2002. The consolidations were painful and destroyed the DEC and "HP Way" engineer-oriented cultures, but the combined company did know how to sell complex systems to enterprises and profit, so it was an improvement for the surviving NonStop division and its customers.

In some ways, Tandem's journey from HP-inspired start-up to an HP-inspired competitor, then to an HP division was "bringing Tandem back to its original roots", but this was not the same HP.