Tuxera Inc. (Finnish: Tuxera Oy) is a private Finnish software company that develops and sells file‑system, flash‑management, and networking software for embedded and enterprise storage applications. Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Espoo, Finland, the company operates internationally with offices in the United States, South Korea, Japan, Hungary, Germany, Taiwan, and China.
History
The origins of Tuxera trace back to the late 1990s with the development of open‑source drivers for the Microsoft NTFS file system on Linux. Anton Altaparmakov led the Linux NTFS kernel driver, while Szabolcs Szakácsits coordinated the platform‑independent NTFS‑3G project, which achieved full read/write support in 2006. Commercial activity began in 2007, and the company was formally incorporated the following year. In 2009 Tuxera entered into licensing agreements with Microsoft, facilitating broader adoption of its file‑system technologies. The firm joined the Linux Foundation in 2011 and became a board member of the SD Association in 2019. Notable acquisitions include Datalight (2019) and HCC Embedded (2021), expanding its portfolio of file‑system and embedded networking products.
Products and Technologies
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Microsoft NTFS by Tuxera – A commercial, fully compatible NTFS driver for Android, Linux, QNX, WinCE, Series 40, Nucleus RTOS, and VxWorks, used in automotive infotainment systems, smart TVs, set‑top boxes, routers, NAS devices, and smartphones.
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Microsoft exFAT by Tuxera – Provides exFAT support for SDXC cards and is employed in automotive, mobile, and consumer electronics. Tuxera was the first independent vendor to obtain legal access to Microsoft’s exFAT specifications.
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Microsoft FAT by Tuxera – Implements FAT file‑system functionality for a range of storage media, enabling compliance with Microsoft patent licences.
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NTFS‑3G – The original open‑source NTFS driver that remains widely used in Linux distributions.
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Reliance Velocity (formerly VelocityFS) – A proprietary flash file system designed for safety‑critical embedded environments, such as automotive event‑data recorders.
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FAT+ – Introduced in 2017, FAT+ is a royalty‑free file‑system extension for UFS cards and removable storage that retains FAT32 compatibility while removing the 4 GiB file‑size limit.
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Consumer Applications – Tuxera previously offered AllConnect (a DLNA streaming app, discontinued in 2020) and Microsoft NTFS for Mac, which enables read/write access to NTFS partitions on macOS.
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SD Memory Card Formatter – Developed in partnership with the SD Association, this free utility formats Secure Digital cards across Windows, Linux, and macOS platforms.
Market Presence
Tuxera’s technologies are integrated into a broad spectrum of devices, including automotive infotainment units, mobile phones, tablets, smart TVs, set‑top boxes, routers, and network‑attached storage appliances. Its customers encompass original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), chipset vendors, and system integrators seeking reliable, licensed file‑system implementations for both consumer and industrial products.
Corporate Structure
Tuxera is privately held, with Steffan Schumacher serving as Chief Executive Officer. The company’s revenue model is based on licensing its software components and providing related support and maintenance services.
References
Information summarized from the Wikipedia entry “Tuxera” (accessed via DuckDuckGo fetch).