History
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Certified Microsoft Business Solutions Solution Developer
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History
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About Selective SoftwareSelective Software's 21 year history may provide some of you with a stroll down "memory lane". Others may just simply find it "amusing" to read. In any case, here it is:
Founded in 1982 by Gary E. Walkowski, this Pittsburgh-based company started by writing custom software applications for businesses in and around the Pittsburgh Tri-State area (Eastern Ohio, Western PA and Northern West Virginia). In the early stages, Selective Software wrote custom computer programs on IBM mini-computers for small-to-medium sized business. Mini-Computers at this stage had one or two floppy disk drives, a large dot matrix printer and a green screen. They sold for around $10,000 with a 30MB hard disk drive considered to be a luxury, as their was a waiting list of three-to-six months to get one, if you could afford one... During these early years, Gary worked alone, writing custom applications including Time Billing systems for Pittsburgh law firms, Fundraising software for School Fundraising companies and unique government applications for the local County - Allegheny County. The programs being developed at this time were entirely character-based, slow, and utilized every bit and byte of memory and disk space that the systems had at that time. Obviously, there was a physical limit as to what could be done with the hardware available at that time. Ahh, but that was about to change... About that time, Intel announced it's first PC processor. if ran at 8Mhz and cost a king's ransom to own. The first wave of PCs from IBM were expensive, clunky but as powerful as a mini, yet fit on the desktop.As PC's began to hit the market, there became a stronger need for character-based accounting and business record management systems. This is were Selective Software began it's quest in the PC marketplace...
Once PCs became more prominent, mini-computers began to fade. In the eighties, networks were a luxury. Most businesses were buying 286 and 386 processor systems for $1000-$3000 with minimal hard disk drives around 10-30MB in storage. As the eighties progressed, the systems became faster and the cheaper. Businesses could afford to buy more machine for their dollars. These were the years that Selective Software sold more equipment and less-and-less software. In those days, it was anyone's guess as to what operating system would prevail. As a developer, we had to deal with dBase and other popular databases, the introduction of Unix as the newly touted operating system and the fight by larger hardware manufacturers like IBM and Honeywell to survive by manufacturing faster mini and mainframe computers... At this point in time, Selective Software sold little in the way of IBM mini-computers, and formed a new alliance Honeywell business systems. After spending a few years selling Honeywell systems, the company merged with Bull Worldwide Systems from France and became known as Honeywell Bull Worldwide Systems. This was a particularly difficult time for Selective Software. Application software development could not keep up with the hardware-driven market since the operating systems were all unique. There was no "Industry Standard" operating system at the time. DOS was used on virtually all new PCs. Unix was trying to make a stand on minis and Honeywell was selling it's own proprietary operating system called GCOS. As a developer, we had to learn all of these command sets and try to find a database that would work on any one of them to develop applications on. That was not an easy task because the database companies could not keep up with the rapidly changing operating systems changes that were trying to keep up with the rapidly changing hardware manufacturers... So, how do you write software using a database that is not up to the operating system that is not up to the hardware specifications. You can't. That's just it. So, the only alternative was to seek out companies that already had applications for those platforms, with an ever so slight edge with readiness to provide the best quality solution for end-users... The search took Selective Software to MCBA. This company had basic business software for mini computers, including all of the everyday, necessary core accounting modules that most businesses needed: General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable and Payroll. They also had Inventory, Order Entry and Purchase Orders. The problem was that even though they had a great deal already accomplished, they were still missing a lot of code. For example, the Purchase Order module was missing a little element known as Receivings Processing. Just a little thing you know. You can cut a PO, but never receive it. Well, it was added at a later time. MCBA ran on Honeywell's minis and later on PCs. So, Selective Software tried to sell MCBA instead of re-writing these core accounting modules... During this time, Selective Software sold many hardware upgrades along with new systems and became a Compaq authorized repair and service center. SSI worked with Office Depot and other major companies as the local authorized warranty repair center for Compaq. Novell Netware networks were all the rage. You could say, that at this time, Selective Software was hardware heavy and software light. After a while, PCs grew even stronger. The operating system of choice, thanks to Bill Gates, soon became DOS. Character-based software was being written in BASIC programming languages and dBase-type databases. Finally, developers gained a little comfort in believing that there could be some "Standardization" in the industry...
One day, as software was being developed in the DOS world, Windows was announced. While most PCs were underpowered to handle it, most developers sensed, that because it was another Bill Gates/Microsoft creation, that one day we would all be using it. How true. However, the hardware had to be re-engineered again and again to accommodate this new operating system. Intel kept building faster and faster processors, memory became cheaper and more readily available and hard drives shot up in capacity and speed to outer space limits...
During this exciting time, DOS was still prominent. Many new software companies were founded, bringing a variety of new products to the market. Among those companies was a New England-based company called Realworld Corporation located then in Concord, New Hampshire. Realworld had the same look-and-feel as MCBA, but was more complete. Selective Software soon signed on as a Realworld reseller. Almost immediately, leads were flowing in from Realworld's sales reps. Life was good, and about to get even better... Over time, Realworld developed or acquired a new windows-based product call "Visual Accounting". It is unknown the actual history of the birth of that product. Anyway, over time, the name was changed to "Expertise". In the late 90's, Realworld changed ownership and leadership. With it's new President and management team, the company took on a whole new look and feel. Their push towards the Windows marketplace was obvious from their sales team down to support. "Expertise" was to be the product of choice for the future. However, there were so many DOS-based Realworld installations in existence that they simply could not ignore them. The character-based product was eventually given the name "Classic"...
Realworld's position, at this time, was to try to sell Windows-based software. It was more expensive, but could do more, as memory utilization and features seemed endless. This was to be the future of the company... Around 1997 or so, the industry, as a whole, found themselves in the infancy stages of what would be the largest software makeover in history. All software had to be upgraded to become Year 2000 Compliant. This was an enormous task that meant that all end-users were "forced" to change or upgrade their software by December 31st, 1999... The two or three years prior to that date saw a never-to-be-seen-again amount of sales. Instead of having to "beat the bushes" for sales, end-users were calling in to order upgrades and new software, some sight-unseen... ...life was good!!!... Around this time, Selective Software became the Realworld Authorized Training Center for both Classic and Expertise. End-users were told to call SSI for their training needs. Training schedules had to be created, updated regularly and sent off to Realworld... Also, around this time, Realworld was experiencing problems with it's Expertise product. While, Selective Software became one of the largest Expertise resellers and became a member of the Realworld Advisory Board, the product lagged behind the industry in features. After much discussion, the search was on for a replacement product. So, in the late 90s', Selective Software became a Great Plains reseller of Dynamics... It took a while to make the first Dynamics sale, as the software was more complex, higher priced and not as easy to learn. The first year or two, all Selective Software employees had to be trained on Dynamics and certain certifications were required prior to actually selling the new product. This took a while...
Sometime in the middle of the year 2000, Realworld sold out to Great Plains. I think that it's now safe to say that they bought Realworld not for it's dealer/distribution channel, not for it's products, but instead for it's customer list. You see, Realworld had amassed around 15,000 to 20,000 end-users using about 3000 resellers. But Great Plains already had their own DOS-based product called GPA and a premier Windows-based product called Dynamics. Fortunately, Selective Software had already become a Great Plains Dynamics reseller... Many of the resellers never made the transition to Great Plains as they were smaller dealers and could not afford the buy-in costs, annual fees and re-training costs associated with moving up to MSGP... While these resellers were trying to decide between becoming involved with Great Plains, Selective Software was finally settling in with the longer sales cycles of selling advanced products. SSI was no longer an authorized training center, as Realworld Corporation, technically, was no longer in business. Great Plains already had their own training centers. But SSI did train it's own client base in the already existing training center. So, things were a little harder for those companies that did not make the transition until later on in the game, but Selective Software, somehow, was already ahead of the curve...
Just when you think that everything is stable, in 2001 Microsoft announced the purchase of Great Plains.
Today, hardware and PCs are abundant. There have been so many manufacturers of equipment, processors, memory, monitors and accessories that it has become impossible for many to survive. Of those that have survived, little profit remains.
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