| Shiva Corporation | |
| Founded: | in Cambridge, Massachusetts |
| Fate: | Acquired by Intel |
| Industry: | Computer networking |
| Type: | Public |
Shiva Corporation was a company that specialized in computer networking and associated equipment, in particular remote access products. The company was founded in 1985, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Shiva was co-founded by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) graduates Frank Slaughter[1] and by Daniel J. Schwinn, the current president and CEO of Avidyne Corporation.[2]
Shiva added to its product portfolio with the acquisition of FastPath, an AppleTalk/Ethernet Gateway from Novell Inc. in 1990.[3]
Shiva acquired the British network products company Spider Systems in 1995, which became Shiva Europe Ltd.[4]
In 1996, Shiva acquired the Cupertino, California-based remote networking software supplier AirSoft Inc for around 65 million USD.[5] This acquisition gave Shiva AirSoft's Powerburst software, which aimed to improve remote-access performance (speed and accuracy) by cacheing files on the client and validating data in the cache prior to fulfilling subsequent access requests.[6] AirSoft's president at the time was Jagdeep Singh, who went on to co-found QuantumScape in 2010.
Users of 16-bit Internet Explorer on Windows 3 with dial-up connections saw the Shiva name regularly, as the company provided part of the dial-up TCP/IP stack for Internet Explorer versions 3, 4 and 5.[7]
In October 1998 Shiva was acquired by Intel[8] and became part of the Intel Network Products Division. Intel's acquisition of Shiva took place during a lengthy class-action lawsuit in which it was alleged that Shiva hid information concerning the deterioration of the company.[9] The lawsuit was settled in 1999 with Shiva agreeing to pay 4.35 million USD.
In November 2002 it was acquired by Simple Access Inc., which adopted the Shiva Corporation identity. A year later, the company was acquired by Mernet Secure Network. Mernet were subsequently acquired by Eicon Networks in February 2004.[10] Since 2006, Eicon are now known as Dialogic Corporation.