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Informatics General
Informatics General Corporation, earlier known as Informatics, Inc., was an American computer software company in existence from 1962 through 1985 and based in Los Angeles, California. It made a variety of software products, and was especially known for its Mark IV file management and report generation product for IBM mainframes, which became the best-selling corporate packaged software product of its time. It also ran computer service bureaus and sold turnkey systems to specific industries. By the mid-1980s Informatics had revenues of near $200 million and over 2,500 employees.
Computer historian Martin Campbell-Kelly, in his 2003 volume From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: A History of the Software Industry, considers Informatics to be an exemplar of the independent, middle-sized software development firms of its era, and the Computer History Museum as well as the Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota have conducted a number of oral histories of the company's key figures. Historian Jeff Yost identifies Informatics as a pioneering "system integration" company, similar to System Development Corporation. The Chicago Tribune wrote that Informatics was "long a legend in software circles".
Informatics General was acquired by Sterling Software in 1985 in what was the first hostile takeover in the software industry. Immediately, Sterling Software became a member of the largest corporations within the software industry, with $200 million in revenue.
Walter F. Bauer (1924–2015), the main founder of Informatics, was from Michigan and earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Michigan in 1951. His early work was at the Michigan Aeronautical Research Center; the National Bureau of Standards, where he programmed the early digital SEAC computer; and for Boeing's BOMARC interceptor missile. He became a manager at the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation in charge of a unit with 400 employees and two computers, an IBM 704 and a UNIVAC 1103A, and in 1958 joined the merged Thompson Ramo Wooldridge company. Bauer later said that he "was never a green eyeshade programmer" nor a "strong technologist", but being a systems person and a manager gave him a good grasp of computer systems and their capabilities.
Another key founder was Werner L. Frank (1929–), who during 1954–55 had done programming work on the ILLIAC I at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He was then recruited by Bauer and joined Ramo-Wooldridge in 1955, where he did numerical analysis and programming in assembly language and FORTRAN. Working with pioneers of scientific computing such as David M. Young, Jr. and George Forsythe, Frank published several important articles on numerical analysis in Journal of the ACM and other publications. By 1958, Ramo-Wooldridge had been acquired by Thompson Products, Inc. and come to be known as TRW Inc.; Frank then did early programming on several defense industry computers, including the AN/UYK-1, and spent long stretches of time in Washington, D.C.
The third founder was another TRW colleague, Richard H. Hill, who had been a professor at UCLA and an assistant director of a joint data center between that university and IBM.
In January 1962, Bauer approached Frank and Hill to start a new independent company that would provide software services. At the time, it was an unusual move since few people saw software as a viable business. "Primarily, we were going to develop systems for large-scale computer systems, probably of a military nature. That was our first objective," stated Bauer in a later interview. Despite a lack of any kind of business school training, Bauer put together a business plan for the new company. Indeed, throughout his time with the company, Bauer embodied the personality characteristics of entrepreneurship.
Venture capital was hard to locate for such start-ups in that era and Bauer met with several rejections. He and the others then decided to join forces with Data Products Corporation, a newly formed manufacturer of computer peripheral equipment. The co-founder of Data Products, Erwin Tomash (1921–2012), was from Minnesota and had earlier worked at Engineering Research Associates, a pioneering computer firm from the 1950s. He had known Bauer and thought that the two new efforts being formed together would provide a hedge against either one of them encountering start-up difficulties. Informatics was thus created as a wholly owned subsidiary of Data Products. The new software firm was capitalized at all of $40,000, of which Data Products contributed $20,000, Bauer $10,000, and Frank and Hill $5,000 each.
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Informatics General
Informatics General Corporation, earlier known as Informatics, Inc., was an American computer software company in existence from 1962 through 1985 and based in Los Angeles, California. It made a variety of software products, and was especially known for its Mark IV file management and report generation product for IBM mainframes, which became the best-selling corporate packaged software product of its time. It also ran computer service bureaus and sold turnkey systems to specific industries. By the mid-1980s Informatics had revenues of near $200 million and over 2,500 employees.
Computer historian Martin Campbell-Kelly, in his 2003 volume From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: A History of the Software Industry, considers Informatics to be an exemplar of the independent, middle-sized software development firms of its era, and the Computer History Museum as well as the Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota have conducted a number of oral histories of the company's key figures. Historian Jeff Yost identifies Informatics as a pioneering "system integration" company, similar to System Development Corporation. The Chicago Tribune wrote that Informatics was "long a legend in software circles".
Informatics General was acquired by Sterling Software in 1985 in what was the first hostile takeover in the software industry. Immediately, Sterling Software became a member of the largest corporations within the software industry, with $200 million in revenue.
Walter F. Bauer (1924–2015), the main founder of Informatics, was from Michigan and earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Michigan in 1951. His early work was at the Michigan Aeronautical Research Center; the National Bureau of Standards, where he programmed the early digital SEAC computer; and for Boeing's BOMARC interceptor missile. He became a manager at the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation in charge of a unit with 400 employees and two computers, an IBM 704 and a UNIVAC 1103A, and in 1958 joined the merged Thompson Ramo Wooldridge company. Bauer later said that he "was never a green eyeshade programmer" nor a "strong technologist", but being a systems person and a manager gave him a good grasp of computer systems and their capabilities.
Another key founder was Werner L. Frank (1929–), who during 1954–55 had done programming work on the ILLIAC I at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He was then recruited by Bauer and joined Ramo-Wooldridge in 1955, where he did numerical analysis and programming in assembly language and FORTRAN. Working with pioneers of scientific computing such as David M. Young, Jr. and George Forsythe, Frank published several important articles on numerical analysis in Journal of the ACM and other publications. By 1958, Ramo-Wooldridge had been acquired by Thompson Products, Inc. and come to be known as TRW Inc.; Frank then did early programming on several defense industry computers, including the AN/UYK-1, and spent long stretches of time in Washington, D.C.
The third founder was another TRW colleague, Richard H. Hill, who had been a professor at UCLA and an assistant director of a joint data center between that university and IBM.
In January 1962, Bauer approached Frank and Hill to start a new independent company that would provide software services. At the time, it was an unusual move since few people saw software as a viable business. "Primarily, we were going to develop systems for large-scale computer systems, probably of a military nature. That was our first objective," stated Bauer in a later interview. Despite a lack of any kind of business school training, Bauer put together a business plan for the new company. Indeed, throughout his time with the company, Bauer embodied the personality characteristics of entrepreneurship.
Venture capital was hard to locate for such start-ups in that era and Bauer met with several rejections. He and the others then decided to join forces with Data Products Corporation, a newly formed manufacturer of computer peripheral equipment. The co-founder of Data Products, Erwin Tomash (1921–2012), was from Minnesota and had earlier worked at Engineering Research Associates, a pioneering computer firm from the 1950s. He had known Bauer and thought that the two new efforts being formed together would provide a hedge against either one of them encountering start-up difficulties. Informatics was thus created as a wholly owned subsidiary of Data Products. The new software firm was capitalized at all of $40,000, of which Data Products contributed $20,000, Bauer $10,000, and Frank and Hill $5,000 each.