Articles

20 Years and Still Going Strong

Retrospection by Lew Holley

Celebrating our 20th anniversary as a company, I have been asked to tell the story of the development of our technology and the impact technology has had on our company and our industry. This is a daunting task, in that I have to reflect on a long period of time, but one in which I plan to have a little fun.

I think I got into the computer industry as a result of a fantasy. I am a product of WWII. I'm not a baby boomer, but one that came about during that second Great War. When I became cognizant as a kid in the early fifties, I grew up on tales of heroism … Hollywood movies about WWII and the Korean conflict. I loved the Navy flicks and especially those about submarines (does anyone remember Gray Lady Down or Run Silent, Run Deep?). I don't know what it was, but where other kids loved stories about airplanes and tanks, I loved those about the perils of living under the sea. Maybe a keystone was my best friend's father who was a Navy Corsair pilot in Korea. He also had a great respect for submarines and their numbers after he was rescued by one during that action, or so the story goes.

The Navy Hymn still makes me tear up to this day ("Eternal Father, Strong to save, Whose arm hath bound the restless wave, Who bid'st the mighty Ocean deep

Its own appointed limits keep; O hear us when we cry to thee, for those in peril on the sea.").

I had, and still have, an active imagination. When I reached college in the early 60s, that imagination took me into the relatively new world of computers. I saw those big boxes with all the blinking lights and felt like a kid looking into the inner sanctum of the submarine. Here was my deep-dive chamber that beckoned me to enlist and become a part of all those heroic tales that nurtured me. Oh, I know that it wasn't anything to compare to the real thing, but to a kid just barely out of high school, it was an awesome adventure … much better than climbing poles for the local telephone company (another story).

When I set out on that adventure, the computer industry was producing the first generation mainframes. I was tasked with punching in octal instructions into an RCA 301. Eventually, I moved on to the RCA 3301 (2nd generation), the IBM 1401, the Spectra 70 and IBM 360 MVS. And let's not forget about the Unisys 2200, né Sperry-Univac 1108. I saw the advent of David Sarnoff selling off the computing side of RCA due to an accounting error and the eventual acquisition of Sperry by Burroughs.

In 1983, KMSYS Worldwide, Inc. was founded. KMSYS Worldwide, Inc. had, and still has, a unique product, I-QU PLUS-1, which can reorganize databases quickly ... saving as much as 80% downtime over conventional approaches. From there, KMSYS Worldwide, Inc. released the sister product to "IQU" that would run under BIS: Q-LINK. This product gave BIS run writers the unique ability to access and update non-BIS files on the 2200. Q-LINK gave rise to InfoQuest, an easy-to-use ad hoc reporting tool that could access any 2200 file structure.

Somewhere along the way KMSYS Worldwide, Inc., like so many companies, discovered Windows®. We quickly recognized that this was a highly affordable environment that would increase not only the productivity of our personnel but those of our customers as well. Here, we had the unique opportunity to offer our customer base something remarkable: an emulation product compatible with the up-and-coming GUI standards from Microsoft: Windows.

The result was the KMSYS Worldwide, Inc. entries into the connectivity world: a complete line of products providing complete mainframe emulation to 2200 or A Series platforms (now suitable for the full Unisys Server MCP and OS 2200 line). From there our products have evolved and are still evolving today. There are stand-alone and file server-based emulators; emulators that include host communication modules for host interaction with PC applications; completely self-contained development kits for host-to-Windows and Web applications; and Web emulation solutions with Web development add-ons. You name it, we've got it.

Our latest introduction to this burgeoning environment is Version 3.1 of KMSYS Worldwide, Inc. eXpress connectivity products. This version works in conjunction with the latest enhancements by Unisys that encompasses NTLM and Kerberos technology. Single point sign-on is the name of the game today. Call us and ask us about this new technology today.  Regardless of your experience or fantasy, I hope the fantasies continue. Mine do. Would someone please send me off on a submarine where I can yell, "Open forward torpedo doors?"