Trillium Digital Systems, Inc. developed and licensed standards-based communications source code software to telecommunications equipment manufacturers for the wireless, broadband, Internet and telephone network infrastructure.
Someone suggested a character named Trillian from the book Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
Its first consulting jobs were to develop communications software for bisynchronous, asynchronous and multiprotocol PAD products.
While consulting, the co-founders decided there was an opportunity to develop and license portable source code software for communications protocols.
It wasn't technically possible to develop a single piece of binary code that could run on many different systems.
Source code, if properly designed and supported, can provide a highly leverageable solution that can be integrated and used in many different systems.
[7] In late 1998, Trillium decided that to provide liquidity for its shareholders and accelerate its growth it should raise money through an initial public offering.
After discussions with investment bankers, it was decided that to improve its initial public offering valuation, it would be necessary to first raise some private equity money to fund organizational expansion, revenue growth and revenue rebalancing.
In early 1999, Trillium entered discussions with various venture capital and private equity firms.
Trillium used the funds to accelerate the growth of its organization and product line in preparation for a planned initial public offering in either 2000 or 2001.
[17] Starting in 1997, and over a 5-year period, Intel spent over $10 billion acquiring communications chip, hardware and software companies.
On August 28, 2000, Intel stopped selling and recalled its Pentium III due to design defects and performance problems,[22] on September 21, 2000, it issued an earnings warning[15] and on September 28 it cancelled its Timna chip[23] and delayed its Pentium 4[24] and Itanium chips due to design defects and performance problems.
Jeff Lawrence moved into Intel when the deal closed, and Larisa Chistyakov stayed with Trillium.
After the deal closed Trillium continued to focus on offering its communications software products and professional services to external customers and also started to develop cross divisional and business group customers within Intel.
Reliance Jio, an Indian telecommunications carrier, announced in July 2018 that it was going to acquire Radisys for $1.72 per share, or $74 million in total.
Trillium software products were also able to support different national and industry variants of specific protocols.
These software products support communications protocols specified in international (e.g. ITU), national (e.g. ANSI) and industry (e.g. IETF) standards.
Trillium conceived of and published a poster that provided detailed technical information about the network infrastructure and protocols in an attractive format that was easy to understand.
It became an indispensable tool for the communications industry, and was displayed on the office walls and conference rooms of tens of thousands of engineers, venture capitalists and financial analysts around the world.