User:Han van Heerde/Sandbox

SmartWare is an integrated software package and a cross-platform development tool including a rapid application development (RAD) system. 

1980: Early history
Back in the 1980s, the romantic rags-to-riches stories of startup companies of young lads in a garage akin to the Stephenson brothers in the early days of the steam engine or Messrs. Benz, Ford, Daimler or Rolls and Royce and many others in their garages flooded the rainbow media.

Any software that did anything useful like correctly add up and store a list of numbers and run on a PC had a chance of success. Thus many software solutions were actually built as single-user systems for the PC and later experienced great difficulty in making the jump to a multi-user environment. Many popular packages even today cannot run in the smallest real multi-user UNIX environment but are rigidly rooted to the PC-based environment in so-called PC-networks.

As experience grew among users, consequent demands increased so the need to build ever more powerful machinery and operating systems to drive them also grew. This in turn formed the platform required by the developers of user software to increase their own brand of functionality in order to supply their clientele with a reasen to buy that particular product. Thus a development spiral was beginning to turn.

Two friends who attended the Jesuit run Rockhurst High School in Kansas City and gone to college together at the University of Missouri were running a DJ service to try and make some money. They then began working on a software product called TIM - Total Information Management.

This product was one of - if not - the first database to operate on a PC. Written in interpretative basic (even WINDOWS version 1.0 was written in basic as was the whole application software suite offered by Nixdorf).

TIM was quite a system as there were no hard drives or umpteen MB of RAM to lean on for computing assistance. Everything was done on 180K, then 360K floppy disks and the then enormous 512KB RAM later extended to 640KB and then 384KB added.

These two pals - Mike Brown and Marc Callegari - operated in a way akin to many companies before since. One grew the product while the other grew the market. Mike Brown was in charge of the business side of operations while Marc Callegari was responsible for technical development.

As the hardware side moved forward demands for further capability grew and grew and also the means to fulfill those needs became ever more available.

At a time when Word Processors were in the make, many competitors in that market seemed to be trying to bridge what for them was an apparent route from the typewriter to enhance the power of the microchip. Some solutions on offer looked like computers and they also appeared to be computers but were limited to the power of what today we might call a text editor.

The outcome of that small competition was then not yet clear. Brown and Callegari came up with the core idea which was to ignite the flame still burning today.

1984: The Smart vision is born
After their direct experience with their software package TIM, Brown and Callegari were looking to expand the capability of their own product base by adding Word Processor and Spreadsheet features and fully integrating all three. This alone would have constituted a small product revolution. However, they added a further component which to this day constitutes the real inherent strength of SmartWare. The magic words were "project processing".

Today, we still use this terminology although many talk of programs or custom-built user applications or simple projects. In simple terms this feature gave any purchaser the software power to build their own application incorporating features from data storage capability of the database, the calculation abilties of the spreadsheet as well as the text based word procesor.

The first package appeared as The Smart Software System 1.0 carrying the date 3rd June 1984. Brown and Callegari must have recognized the foresight in their idea and application development which is reflected in the name of their product. They called it "smart" after all. Furthermore, the precursor TIM or to give it its full name Total Information Management contained the word total. Here already the aim of offering a complete solution is clearly apparent.

At this time WordStar considered by many to be the first Word Processor software package appeared, SQL (later Informix) was starting to appear as the first relational database on UNIX systems with Dbase on PCs and Lotus 1-2-3 occupied the space in the spreadsheet area. Programming languages were almost a dime a dozen with BASIC, COBOL and perhaps ASSEMBLER occupying most spots. In all these various software sectors many other specialist products - most of which have disappeaed and are now almost forgotten - were appearing on the market for the first time.

So early in proceedings Brown and Callegari showed an incredible level of professionalism. Of special note on this tack is the involvement of Dr. Roger Schroff, Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southern Maine in the development of Smart.

Dr. Schroff researched various design aspects of the software from an ergonomic standpoint. This was an amazing foresight in a world dominated by the purely functional aspect. Although design was often used in building machinery pure functionality was more important together with final cost. The appearance of most computers and keyboards reflect about one single step from the typewriter and no more. The involvement of ergonomics - the science of work and energy - employed from the point of view of the user was indeed not an every day occurance in software. One wonders if it is today.

One of the clear remaining features that go back to this period is the positioning of the command line in SmartWare today. Command lines are positioned at the bottom of the screen where people look easily rather than at the top which would force users raise their heads and to look up. Thus ease of use would be diminished.

As human beings have remained basically the same physically we can still enjoy this ease of optics today, although we perhaps no longer realize what an advantage this little fact is and that it had been scientifically established in the early nineteen eighties.

At the time when new software was appearing rapidly, built in most cases by enterprises unknown to the marketplace which in itself was populated by new customers, many vendors gave their software away for free. The idea was to get potential sales partners (and dependent on the type of package later also developers) to use the software and then sell it on to their retail customers with the relevant high level of enthusiasm.

In some cases enthusiasm or the emotional factor surrounding a package later became more important than the functionality it could offer. Show business took over from cold functions of economic added value and emotionality (some might say ignorance of the facts) was pushed to take over control of decision making.

From the outset Smart was sold at a cover charge of $25 to any interested professional party such as PC salespersons. This was unusual and pretty unique. In those days, most companies simply gave their product away for free to these sales people but Innovative Software knew that if they charged for it, the salesperson would investigate it more thoroughly instead of throwing it on the pile as just another software title. A bit like the idea that if you pay $1 for a shopping trolley you will return it to the reception area just to retrieve your $1 coin. Strange little piece of modern human nature but it works nearly every time.

Those with knowledge of apparent local US geographic particularities (reference to the background of the Show Me State, Missouri from where SmartWare started its campaign) might offer an explanation as to this sales policy, yet Smart was different in its product philosophy so why not in sales as well.

Nevertheless by the end of 1987 The Smart Software System sold by Brown and Callegari under their banner of Innovative Software, Inc. had grossed approximately $130 million in a worldwide sales network. They employed some 60 people we know today as Tele-Marketers with their package going out at a manufacturers recommend retail price of $585 in various languages around the world. In fact, vendors sold the package at a higher price for example Sears Business Systems Center sold at $895 and in Germany the product was sold at $1199 to cover the extensive translation costs.

Knowledge Books by External Publishers and Writers
Perhaps one of the most obvious signs that a product in the software industry has become a success is the willingness of authors and external third party publishers to produce their own knowledge books on the subject of any particular product. Smart as well as SmartWare have often been in this position, albeit mainly in the period 1987-1992.

Smart tips, tricks and traps was written by Andrew N. Schwartz, St. Louis, Missouri who was and is an avid SmartWare user and committed Smart nut. This particular book and others on later versions of SmartWare helped to open up and cement the popularity of this software package. Indeed, this book retailed at around $25 which is a refreshingly low price for a book containing so much specialist knowledge yet an added cost to anyone having purchased the original package from the manufacturer.

The great advantage of this kind of publication was clearly the removed involvement with the product from the viewpoint of the author who is more a user communicating acquired abilities rather than the manufacturer trying to articulate what should really be happening. Thus this work by Schwartz is an easy read and full of many goodies that help provide a newer user with a practical insight and assistance into how to go about producing a customized solution using Smart or simply employing to the full the various basic qualities the software has to offer.

Fairy Tale Success Story
This almost fairy tale success story within three and a half years is typical of many a gold rush rags-to-riches tale from the IT industry. Many people today do not realize that the history of SmartWare also contains this type of development. When we analyze the content of the initial package Smart was indeed smart. It offered an answer to all the needs (data, calculation and text) of any office with the ability to cater for any special requirements (project processing) and also offered many scientifically researched ergonomic design features all at a price anyone could afford. The common alternative was the complex combination of Lotus 123, Wordstar and Dbase. Smart just had to be successful.

This is perhaps the simplest explanation not only for the success of Smart as a product but also for the almost religious attachment many users found and have since found. Smart or today SmartWare offered a complete solution for offices and seems to have an inherent capability to adjust in time to any new developments and requirements - graphics, internet, voice control, GUI and interfacing being cases in point. Indeed, certain people consider SmartWare to have been specially written for the internet - more on that later. At that time Smart was already available for Local Area Networks.

Informix
Based on the success of The Smart Software System apparently bigger players came into the game. It was no surprise when Informix based in Lenexa, Kansas bought Innovative Systems, Inc. Indeed, the first manuals carried a logo referring to Informix Innovative Software.

The new organization carried Marc Callegari as V.P. of Research and Development, Dr. Roger Schroff is one of four people listed under Product Design. Unfortunately, there is no reference to Mike Brown. The same set of manuals dating from copyright dates up to 1990 begin to refer to "SmartWare from Informix" and the system is still clearly capable of working as a floppy disk system.

The Applications and Consultants Registry which contains information up to the end of September 1987 shows names which are still well-known today including Candy Straub in Pennsylvania and CS Computing in Toronto later to play an important role in this story.

Yet within 18 months of the takeover Informix produced SmartWare II. This software package became highly popular under version 1.5 which was released in 1991 and remained the most stable and popular of this phase of development for years to come.

Others remained with Smart 3.10 and some even drive 3.10 to this day.

What better testimony can there be to the quality, range of features as well as pure performance and stability of these software packages. The almost futuristic product basis still allows these products to run today despite the apocalyptic developments in machines and operating systems.

SmartWare - as the product was now called - remained state of the art and as ever true to its roots. The focus on business clients is obvious from the theme of the advertising information from those days.

Color prints with graphs within Word Processor documents were ahead of the game at that time. Others took years to catch up to this performance level.

Possibly again reflecting the geographical background of SmartWare the advertising also refers to the "best value" aspect of the package for business solutions. This attitude is still evident in the curent offer.

In many countries SmartWare was positioned as a "pentathlete" (Word Processor, Database, Spreadsheet, Communications and Programming Language) which was capable of competing head-on with any specialist product.

One journalist viewed SmartWare as: "A pentathlete that is capable of taking on the specialists and winning."

SmartWare had and still has many technical featues to offer including spell-checkers for a good dozen languages as well as local language project processing in 6 foreign languages. The power of the project processing systm now known as SmartWare Programming Language or SPL was increased and included a fully relational database engine supplied by Faircom of St. Louis, Missouri.

SPL was and is capable of all required features as well as public, local and global variables and commands. These features applied to all modules of the SmartWare package and allowed the most complex type of programming on a series of platforms from DOS to Novell and most flavours of UNIX. In fact this cross-platform capability has remained an oftentimes hidden unique sales proposition special to SmartWare.