It provided cross-platform software development tools and embedded components for parallel, data-intensive, and other high-performance computing (HPC) applications.

In January 2019, the firm was acquired by Minneapolis, Minnesota–based application software developer Perforce,[1] which is maintaining Rogue Wave's products.

[2] The company was founded in 1989 in Seattle, Washington by Thomas Keffer and Richard Romea, producing a C++ class library in 1989 called Math.h++.

[9] With expanding business scope and need for new hires, in October 2015, Rogue Wave moved from Boulder to a somewhat larger and newer space in Louisville, closer to the Denver talent pool;[10] it also acquired Zend Technologies,[11] a maker of PHP tools and services.

[12] In November 2017, the company acquired ZeroTurnaround,[13] creator of JRebel and XRebel Java developer tools for profiling and deployment.