“General Atlantic Partners has invested $20 million in Mission
Critical Linux, a company populated by numerous former Compaq
employees who plan to make Linux as burly as its Unix cousins.
Unlike several other Linux start-ups, Mission Critical Linux
doesn’t plan to use the cash to fund aggressive expansion efforts.
“We believe we have critical mass at the moment” with about 80
employees, said chief executive Moiz Kohari.”
“The company hopes to make more of a splash in two weeks, when
it plans to release software to the open-source community that will
make Linux computers able to take over from one another if a linked
computer crashes, Kohari said. Other companies, including Red Hat,
Cobalt Networks, and Steeleye Technology, are working on similar
products, in general referred to as “failover clustering.”
“To write all this software, Mission Critical Linux has hired
many old Unix hands from Compaq, IBM, Sun Microsystems and others,
Kohari said. The employees include several of the original
architects of Digital Unix, which became Tru64 Unix in 1999 after
Compaq acquired Digital in 1998, as well as Digital’s OpenVMS
operating system.”