Prerelational financial app software vendors 1 — a quick overview
MSA (Management Science America). This section got so long I’m breaking it out as a separate post just about MSA.
M & D (McCormack & Dodge). M & D was MSA’s archrival in mainframe financial software. They had various claims to product superiority, based on having “more CPAs on staff” than MSA and also on being first to market with realtime applications. However, M & D sold out early to Dun & Bradstreet, and lost its edge as key managers left.
M & D seems to have been a lively company. Many stories about drugs or sex emerged (I don’t actually recall any drugs-and-sex-combined stories, for whatever reasons). Key players included: Frank Dodge, a former schoolteacher who founded another not terribly successful apps company (The Dodge Group) afterwards; Jim McCormack, who happily retired from software into real estate, but sadly died a few years later; development chief John Landry, who’s been a prominent industry figure ever since, and sales/marketing chief Bob Weiler, ditto. Landry and Weiler went together to Distribution Management Systems, Cullinet (after it bought DMS), and Lotus, before going their separate ways.
M & D’s venture into manufacturing applications seemed later and more half-hearted than Comserv’s or Cullinet’s. But they eventually did wind up with a version of (and may even have bought control of) the Rath & Strong technology.
Cullinet. Cullinet was better known as a DBMS vendor. But in a precursor of what became the Oracle strategy, it pursued financial and manufacturing applications as well. The financial applications were originally licensed from M & D. The manufacturing apps were originally licensed from Rath & Strong, as were M & D’s.
One negative consequence was that the industry teamed up against Cullinet. For example, ADR in DBMS and MSA in apps formed a close marketing relationship. To general industry agreement at the time, I dubbed this the ABC (Anybody But Cullinet) strategy.
Cincom. DBMS vendor Cincom pursued a Cullinet-like apps strategy. Not many people cared.
J. D. Edwards. If I recall correctly, JDE’s main platform was the IBM System 38, the predecessor to the AS/400. Anyhow, JDE was a Denver-based financial software company. Its main claim to fame, other than the platform that it ran on, was a superb order entry system. Rob Kelley, referring to his days at Arthur Andersen, once told me that Andersen’s order entry system had had 45,000 lines of code, JDE’s had had 5,000 lines, and JDE’s had been better.
SAP. I’ve already written up what I recall about SAP in the 1980s.
This initial list leaves a lot of companies out, of course. Other than the MRP companies — ASK, NCA, XCS, and so on — the biggest omission may be Walker Interactive. But also missing are Global Software, Data Design, a whole lot of human resources specialists and so on.
Also missing are other vertical market groups, most notably in banking software, which is where general ledger products (the first major financial application) first succeeded in a big way.
I hope to get around to writing about these subjects before too long.
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