Levanta
Encyclopedia
Levanta was a company based in San Mateo, California
, United States, that created products for Linux
management and data virtualization.
was founded in San Francisco in 1998 by Dave Sifry
, Arthur Tyde
and Dave LaDuke. The company's initial goal was to be "the 800 number for Linux
" and operate 24 hours a day. In the late 1990s, Linux was slowly gaining in popularity as both a desktop and server operating system. A common complaint was that Linux was inappropriate in business environments because obtaining support for Linux involved newsgroups, mailing lists, and websites operated by volunteers. Linuxcare intended to hire some of the disparate Linux experts and get them working together to provide reliable support, for which individuals and businesses would pay.
When Dell
started to ship desktop computers with Red Hat Linux
pre-installed in 1999, they bundled a coupon that allowed a certain number of free support calls to Linuxcare.
Several of the people that Linuxcare eventually hired were developers of well-known open source
software projects:
These experts were allowed to use company time to develop their projects, and were expected to help with technical support in their areas of expertise.
They also hired a number of people from the open source support community including the Linux Gazette
"Answer Guy" (Jim Dennis).
Linuxcare had four divisions: Linuxcare Labs that tested and certified hardware systems for Linux compatibility, Linuxcare University, which provided training, Professional Services which provided consultants to other companies and Research and Development that concentrated on enhancing open source
software.
Some of their early training engagements included courses presented to customer technical support and sales engineering staff for SGI
, Motorola
Computer Products, and others. The training materials were primarily focused around LPI
topics and certification (systems administration). Linuxcare was a significant support of the early LPI work and former Linuxcare employees (including Jim Lacey, current president and CEO of LPI who was in charge of Linuxcare University).
In December 1999, Linuxcare acquired Ottawa
-based consulting company The Puffin Group and the Italian
company Prosa
. Linuxcare was preparing for an initial public offering
in early 2000, until it fired its CEO Fernand Sarrat and CIO
Doug Nassaur. Shortly after, around 33% of the company was laid off. In January 2001, Turbolinux
and Linuxcare began discussing a merger, but it was called off in May 2001.
Following the withdrawal of its IPO registration statement, Linuxcare changed direction and began developing Linux-based software. Over the next several years, the company became much smaller, replaced most of its staff and board, relocated to San Mateo, California, received new venture capital investments, and, in 2004, changed its name to Levanta (the name of its flagship software product). As Levanta, the company no longer provided Linux technical support.
Levanta changed from software to hardware product model and in 2005 introduced the Intrepid, the industry's first Linux management appliance
, which permitted machine provisioning, change control and limited content management for multiple Linux distribution
s. The initial Intrepid M offering was followed by the high-availability Intrepid X model, which provided warm-failover capability. Finally the Intrepid M designation was changed to refer only to models using external NAS
storage served by a NetApp filer
; the model with its own internal storage was then redesignated Intrepid S. The last Intrepid release included monitoring capability for managed machines and the Intrepid itself plus a sophisticated policy engine that permitted on-the-fly rebooting or rebinding of managed machines to new ones from a reserved pool as dictated by policy rules.
Levanta laid off all employees and went out of business on March 31, 2008.
The rights to the Linuxcare brand were repurchased in 2009, and the company has been re-born as Linuxcare LLC
, based in San Francisco.
San Mateo, California
San Mateo is a city in San Mateo County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area. With a population of approximately 100,000 , it is one of the larger suburbs on the San Francisco Peninsula, located between Burlingame to the north, Foster City to the east, Belmont to the south,...
, United States, that created products for Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
management and data virtualization.
Company history
LinuxcareLinuxcare
Linuxcare was founded in San Francisco in 1998 by Dave Sifry, Arthur Tyde and Dave LaDuke. The company's initial goal was to be "the 800 number for Linux" and operate 24 hours a day...
was founded in San Francisco in 1998 by Dave Sifry
Dave Sifry
Dave Sifry is an American software entrepreneur and blogosphere icon known for founding Technorati, a leading blog search engine. He also lectures widely on wireless technology and policy, weblogs, and open source software....
, Arthur Tyde
Arthur Tyde
Arthur Tyde is an American software entrepreneur and private investigator based in San Francisco and SE Asia. He has been an advocate for Open Source software since founding the first Linux Users Group in the San Francisco / Silicon Valley Area...
and Dave LaDuke. The company's initial goal was to be "the 800 number for Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
" and operate 24 hours a day. In the late 1990s, Linux was slowly gaining in popularity as both a desktop and server operating system. A common complaint was that Linux was inappropriate in business environments because obtaining support for Linux involved newsgroups, mailing lists, and websites operated by volunteers. Linuxcare intended to hire some of the disparate Linux experts and get them working together to provide reliable support, for which individuals and businesses would pay.
When Dell
Dell
Dell, Inc. is an American multinational information technology corporation based in 1 Dell Way, Round Rock, Texas, United States, that develops, sells and supports computers and related products and services. Bearing the name of its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest...
started to ship desktop computers with Red Hat Linux
Red Hat Linux
Red Hat Linux, assembled by the company Red Hat, was a popular Linux based operating system until its discontinuation in 2004.Red Hat Linux 1.0 was released on November 3, 1994...
pre-installed in 1999, they bundled a coupon that allowed a certain number of free support calls to Linuxcare.
Several of the people that Linuxcare eventually hired were developers of well-known open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
software projects:
- Rasmus LerdorfRasmus LerdorfRasmus Lerdorf is a Danish programmer with Canadian citizenship and is most notable as the creator of the PHP scripting language. He authored the first two versions...
worked on PHPPHPPHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document... - Martin Pool worked on ApacheApache HTTP ServerThe Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to as Apache , is web server software notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web. In 2009 it became the first web server software to surpass the 100 million website milestone...
- Rusty RussellRusty RussellPaul "Rusty" Russell is an Australian free software programmer and advocate.- Software development :Russell wrote the packet filtering systems ipchains and netfilter/iptables in the Linux operating system kernel...
worked on ipchainsIpchainsLinux IP Firewalling Chains, normally called ipchains, is free software to control the packet filter/firewall capabilities in the 2.2 series of Linux kernels. It superseded ipfwadm, but was replaced by iptables in the 2.4 series. Unlike iptables, ipchains is stateless.It is a rewrite of Linux's... - Richard Morrell founded SmoothWallSmoothWallSmoothwall is a Linux distribution designed to be used as an open source firewall. Designed for ease of use, Smoothwall is configured via a web-based GUI, and requires little or no knowledge of Linux to install or use....
- Andrew TridgellAndrew TridgellAndrew "Tridge" Tridgell is an Australian computer programmer best known as the author of and contributor to the Samba file server, and co-inventor of the rsync algorithm....
worked on samba, rsyncRsyncrsync is a software application and network protocol for Unix-like and Windows systems which synchronizes files and directories from one location to another while minimizing data transfer using delta encoding when appropriate. An important feature of rsync not found in most similar...
These experts were allowed to use company time to develop their projects, and were expected to help with technical support in their areas of expertise.
They also hired a number of people from the open source support community including the Linux Gazette
Linux Gazette
The Linux Gazette is a monthly self-published Linux computing webzine.-History:It was started in 1995 by John M. Fisk as a free service. He went on to pursue his studies and become a medical doctor. At Mr. Fisk's request, the publication was sponsored and managed by SSC...
"Answer Guy" (Jim Dennis).
Linuxcare had four divisions: Linuxcare Labs that tested and certified hardware systems for Linux compatibility, Linuxcare University, which provided training, Professional Services which provided consultants to other companies and Research and Development that concentrated on enhancing open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
software.
Some of their early training engagements included courses presented to customer technical support and sales engineering staff for SGI
Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics, Inc. was a manufacturer of high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and software, founded in 1981 by Jim Clark...
, Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
Computer Products, and others. The training materials were primarily focused around LPI
Linux Professional Institute
The Linux Professional Institute Inc. is a non-profit organization that provides vendor-independent professional certification for Linux system administrators and programmers....
topics and certification (systems administration). Linuxcare was a significant support of the early LPI work and former Linuxcare employees (including Jim Lacey, current president and CEO of LPI who was in charge of Linuxcare University).
In December 1999, Linuxcare acquired Ottawa
Ottawa
Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...
-based consulting company The Puffin Group and the Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
company Prosa
Prosa
Prosa is Norway's largest literary magazine. It is a magazine dealing with prose, academic literature, writing culture, and cultural politics, and contains literary essays, reviews, and articles. The magazine prides itself on its editorial independence, and is published by the Norwegian Non-Fiction...
. Linuxcare was preparing for an initial public offering
Initial public offering
An initial public offering or stock market launch, is the first sale of stock by a private company to the public. It can be used by either small or large companies to raise expansion capital and become publicly traded enterprises...
in early 2000, until it fired its CEO Fernand Sarrat and CIO
Chief information officer
Chief information officer , or information technology director, is a job title commonly given to the most senior executive in an enterprise responsible for the information technology and computer systems that support enterprise goals...
Doug Nassaur. Shortly after, around 33% of the company was laid off. In January 2001, Turbolinux
Turbolinux
-Linux distribution:The Turbolinux distribution was created as a rebranded Red Hat distribution by Pacific HiTech employee Scott Stone. Scott was the lead release engineer through version 3.6....
and Linuxcare began discussing a merger, but it was called off in May 2001.
Following the withdrawal of its IPO registration statement, Linuxcare changed direction and began developing Linux-based software. Over the next several years, the company became much smaller, replaced most of its staff and board, relocated to San Mateo, California, received new venture capital investments, and, in 2004, changed its name to Levanta (the name of its flagship software product). As Levanta, the company no longer provided Linux technical support.
Levanta changed from software to hardware product model and in 2005 introduced the Intrepid, the industry's first Linux management appliance
Computer appliance
A computer appliance is generally a separate and discrete hardware device with integrated software , specifically designed to provide a specific computing resource. These devices became known as "appliances" because of their similarity to home appliances, which are generally "closed and sealed" –...
, which permitted machine provisioning, change control and limited content management for multiple Linux distribution
Linux distribution
A Linux distribution is a member of the family of Unix-like operating systems built on top of the Linux kernel. Such distributions are operating systems including a large collection of software applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, media players, and database applications...
s. The initial Intrepid M offering was followed by the high-availability Intrepid X model, which provided warm-failover capability. Finally the Intrepid M designation was changed to refer only to models using external NAS
Network-attached storage
Network-attached storage is file-level computer data storage connected to a computer network providing data access to heterogeneous clients. NAS not only operates as a file server, but is specialized for this task either by its hardware, software, or configuration of those elements...
storage served by a NetApp filer
NetApp filer
In computer storage, NetApp filer, known also as NetApp Fabric-Attached Storage , or NetApp's network attached storage device are NetApp's offering in the area of Storage Systems. A FAS functions in an enterprise-class Storage area network as well as a networked storage appliance...
; the model with its own internal storage was then redesignated Intrepid S. The last Intrepid release included monitoring capability for managed machines and the Intrepid itself plus a sophisticated policy engine that permitted on-the-fly rebooting or rebinding of managed machines to new ones from a reserved pool as dictated by policy rules.
Levanta laid off all employees and went out of business on March 31, 2008.
The rights to the Linuxcare brand were repurchased in 2009, and the company has been re-born as Linuxcare LLC
Linuxcare
Linuxcare was founded in San Francisco in 1998 by Dave Sifry, Arthur Tyde and Dave LaDuke. The company's initial goal was to be "the 800 number for Linux" and operate 24 hours a day...
, based in San Francisco.
External links
- http://www.levanta.com/
- http://www.levanta.com/blog/