Pharsalia Technologies
Encyclopedia
Roswell, Georgia
Roswell is a city located in northern Fulton County; it is a suburb of northern Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The 2010 Census population was 88,346. It is the eighth largest city in Georgia...
, as an emerging company developing network infrastructure products for the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
market. Led by a team of over 28 software engineers, Pharsalia focused on developing software products for the rapidly escalating content delivery
Content delivery
Content delivery describes the delivery of media content such as audio, video, computer software and video games over a delivery medium such as broadcasting or the Internet.Content delivery has two parts:...
market. The company was headed by Chip Howes, whose team is the inventor of record for over 30 patents in the area of TCP/IP server
Server (computing)
In the context of client-server architecture, a server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the "clients". Thus, the "server" performs some computational task on behalf of "clients"...
load balancing
Load balancing (computing)
Load balancing is a computer networking methodology to distribute workload across multiple computers or a computer cluster, network links, central processing units, disk drives, or other resources, to achieve optimal resource utilization, maximize throughput, minimize response time, and avoid...
, and are credited with the invention of the technology in 1996.
Pharsalia was acquired
Mergers and acquisitions
Mergers and acquisitions refers to the aspect of corporate strategy, corporate finance and management dealing with the buying, selling, dividing and combining of different companies and similar entities that can help an enterprise grow rapidly in its sector or location of origin, or a new field or...
by Alteon WebSystems
Alteon WebSystems
Alteon WebSystems Incorporated , originally known as Alteon Networks, was an Internet infrastructure company based in San Jose, California.Alteon was acquired by Nortel Networks on October 4, 2000.-History:...
of San Jose, California
San Jose, California
San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...
on July 21, 2000 in a stock swap worth about $221 million. Subsequently, Alteon was acquired by Nortel Networks on October 4, 2000.
After integrating the company into Nortel Networks, most of the original team was laid off by August 2003. The founder
Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...
s went on to start another company, Steelbox Networks
Steelbox Networks
Steelbox Networks Inc. is a privately owned company that engineers devices to distribute, store and retrieve large amounts of video data across IP networks...
, and hired back many of the same engineers.
Trivia
PharsaliaPharsalia
The Pharsalia is a Roman epic poem by the poet Lucan, telling of the civil war between Julius Caesar and the forces of the Roman Senate led by Pompey the Great...
is a name related to the location of Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
's victory over Pompey
Battle of Pharsalus
The Battle of Pharsalus was a decisive battle of Caesar's Civil War. On 9 August 48 BC at Pharsalus in central Greece, Gaius Julius Caesar and his allies formed up opposite the army of the republic under the command of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus...
.
Pharsalia Technologies was named after Pharsalia Plantation in Massies Mill, VA, the birthplace of Sarah Howes, mother of founder Chip Howes.