Northgate Information Solutions
Encyclopedia
Early years
The company was founded as CMC, or Computer Machinery Company, in 1969. They were originally distributors and subsequently manufacturers of Key to Disk computerComputer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
systems made by the US-based Computer Machinery Corporation. The CMC Key to Disk systems were used by major companies and government departments for data capture (hence the name). In 1976, CMC developed a bit-slice based intelligent terminal—the P99—which it used both as a front end processor to the Key to Disk systems and as a terminal in its own right. It then evolved the CMC P99 into the P141—a true front-end processor, which it used to implement a new Data Capture system launched as SOVEREIGN. This was successfully used in manufacturing companies such as Rolls Royce
Rolls-Royce plc
Rolls-Royce Group plc is a global power systems company headquartered in the City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom. It is the world’s second-largest maker of aircraft engines , and also has major businesses in the marine propulsion and energy sectors. Through its defence-related activities...
, British Steel
British Steel
British Steel was a major British steel producer. It originated as a nationalised industry, the British Steel Corporation , formed in 1967. This was converted to a public limited company, British Steel PLC, and privatised in 1988. It was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index...
and various government departments including providing data capture for the DHSS at Newcastle upon Tyne. It later evolved into the M8000 system, based on Intel-processor-based systems.
In 1981, the company was purchased by Microdata, a California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
based computer company, whose 1973 commercial released Reality operating and database
Database
A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...
environment product CMC was also distributing. The REALITY name was given to Microdata's computer system and the operating system—a version of the Pick operating system
Pick operating system
The Pick operating system is a demand-paged, multiuser, virtual memory, time-sharing operating system based around a unique "multivalued" database. Pick is used primarily for business data processing...
. At the time, Microdata owned rights to the Pick Operating system in parallel with Dick Pick - who had developed it with Microdata. CMC Leasing Limited (the official trading name) then changed its name to Microdata UK limited, aka MUK. The company then started UK manufacture of the Reality range of computer systems in its manufacturing factory in Maxted Road, Hemel Hempstead
Hemel Hempstead
Hemel Hempstead is a town in Hertfordshire in the East of England, to the north west of London and part of the Greater London Urban Area. The population at the 2001 Census was 81,143 ....
. Microdata was purchased by McDonnell Douglas Corporation in 1985 and the company was re-branded as McDonnell Douglas Information Systems Limited (MDIS).
The company introduced the M9000 (aka Sequoia in US) which offered dynamic performance using soft loaded firmware and processor performance keys using the same hardware components to minimise sparing
Redundancy (engineering)
In engineering, redundancy is the duplication of critical components or functions of a system with the intention of increasing reliability of the system, usually in the case of a backup or fail-safe....
and maximise cost effectiveness, (although 1Mb memory sold for 25,000 GBP in those days). A new Manufacturing and Office complex was built in Boundary Way, Hemel Hempstead. Work starts virtually as soon as the building is open to double its size, so they became known as known as 'Phase 1 and 2' internally but 'Maylands Park' externally. The company then produced the UK designed Spirit processor which was launched as a lower end REALITY product as the M6000. Later the company developed the Series 19 (aka Pegasus) successor to the Sequoia using a world-wide development team spanning the two engineering facilities in Hemel Hempstead, UK and Irvine
Irvine, California
Irvine is a suburban incorporated city in Orange County, California, United States. It is a planned city, mainly developed by the Irvine Company since the 1960s. Formally incorporated on December 28, 1971, the city has a population of 212,375 as of the 2010 census. However, the California...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
.
In 1989, the second new building, known as Marylands Park South, was completed at Boundary Way to accommodate the thousand staff then at the head office location. At the time, the company was thought to have one of the largest company car fleets in the UK (Hertz).
1990s
1992 was the last year MDIS made a computer system from scratch, which meant the end of UK manufacturing for the company. It continued its hardware and systems integration work at Maylands Park North. It could do this because it had produced RealityX, an open platform REALITY environment (internally known for a time as CORA). This was the result of several years of development taking the REALITY Operating System (aka ROS) and re-engineering into a UNIXUnix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
application capable of running on non-MDIS computers. RealityX provided not only end user/application compatibility but also provided it at the developer assembler level. The same source code was used for RealityX and the original REALITY implementations. RealityX allowed the REALITY Operating Environment and applications developed for REALITY to continue to be sold and maintained using best of breed open systems under the SeriesX name.
Initially MDIS used UNIX systems from Encore Computer
Encore Computer
Encore Computer was an early pioneer in the parallel computing market, based in Marlborough, Massachusetts. Although offering a number of system designs beginning in 1985, they were never as well known as other companies in this field such as Pyramid Technology, Alliant, and the most similar...
, then from Motorola Computer Systems
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
and Data General
Data General
Data General was one of the first minicomputer firms from the late 1960s. Three of the four founders were former employees of Digital Equipment Corporation. Their first product, the Data General Nova, was a 16-bit minicomputer...
—all using M88k RISC processors and UNIX System V. Later they moved to run on Solaris
Solaris Operating System
Solaris is a Unix operating system originally developed by Sun Microsystems. It superseded their earlier SunOS in 1993. Oracle Solaris, as it is now known, has been owned by Oracle Corporation since Oracle's acquisition of Sun in January 2010....
-based systems from Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
. The open approach eventually led to a Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
platform in 1995 and continued feature enhancements that are still being developed . As a corollary to this operating environment, MDIS acquired and developed its PROIV fourth generation language (4GL), which was used worldwide by companies including Fujitsu
Fujitsu
is a Japanese multinational information technology equipment and services company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is the world's third-largest IT services provider measured by revenues....
. A variant was implemented on REALITY called ALL (Application Language Liberator).
In 1993, a management buyout
Buyout
A buyout, in finance, is an investment transaction by which the ownership equity of a company, or a majority share of the stock of the company is acquired. The acquiror thereby "buys out" control of the target company....
occurred. At this time, and with the end of the Cold War, the parent company McDonnell Douglas was realising that they didn’t have another Microsoft on their hands and were susceptible to a cash offer. 29 Senior Managers and Directors of the company, under the leadership of Jerry Causley CEO, and through Barings Bank
Barings Bank
Barings Bank was the oldest merchant bank in London until its collapse in 1995 after one of the bank's employees, Nick Leeson, lost £827 million due to speculative investing, primarily in futures contracts, at the bank's Singapore office.-History:-1762–1890:Barings Bank was founded in 1762 as the...
, purchased the company from McDonnell Douglas
McDonnell Douglas
McDonnell Douglas was a major American aerospace manufacturer and defense contractor, producing a number of famous commercial and military aircraft. It formed from a merger of McDonnell Aircraft and Douglas Aircraft in 1967. McDonnell Douglas was based at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport...
.
In 1994, the company was floated on the London Stock Exchange
London Stock Exchange
The London Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located in the City of London within the United Kingdom. , the Exchange had a market capitalisation of US$3.7495 trillion, making it the fourth-largest stock exchange in the world by this measurement...
under the MDIS banner. Shares were sold, at the flotation, for 260 pence each. Unfortunately within two months the shares were worth less than one pound.
Through the latter part of the 1990s, most of the original directors and senior managers left the company, to be replaced by a new management group. The new CEO, John Klien, took the reins after the company issued yet another profit warning to the stock exchange.
The company's key application products (Human Resources) were re-implemented in PRO-IV to improve product availability and functionality.
In 1998, the Maylands Park South Building was sold to 3Com
3Com
3Com was a pioneering digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network infrastructure products. The company was co-founded in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, Howard Charney, Bruce Borden, and Greg Shaw...
. This complex had accommodated about 600 staff, who were either re-located to the other Maylands Park building or, with others in the group, made redundant.
In 1999, Chris Stone was appointed as a new CEO. At this time the company was losing about £100m per year and several years of downsizing and rationalisation followed. The company re-focused on its core, local Government and Public Sector (police, fire and ambulance) markets and application products (Payroll, Pensions and HR systems). Services such as hardware maintenance and managed services were also offered.
2000s
In order to re-brand the company, and shed the old loss making image, the company changed its name to its current name, Northgate Information Solutions, in 2000. This was actually the name of a small software house which the old MDIS company purchased years earlier.Through "re-focusing", and the loss of about two thirds of the original MDIS staff, the business finally regains its profitability in 2001. Through the sale of the Health business unit, the company raises capital for acquisitions. At the company head office, now located in the original phase 1 and 2 three storey building, consolidate onto two floors.
In 2002, Northgate acquired Prolog, payroll outsourcing & solutions. In 2003, To expand core business and to gain access to a wider range of clients, the company acquire CaraPeople, (payroll outsourcing), blue8, (location and citizen centric IT systems for emergency services), Hays CSG, (data management information systems (police) and consulting), PWA Group, (HR applications).
From 2004 and on, the company continues its rapid growth. No longer a company stuck in the glory days of its history, struggling to re-shape to the changing business needs of its markets, it aggressively acquires business after business. In a significant move in focussing on application-led business, it acquires Rebus (previously Peterborough Software), one of its main competitors (HR Group, which provides HR and payroll solutions), and CIM Systems (communication technologies for control room environments). As a result of its larger capitalisation, it became listed on the London Stock Exchange FTSE 250 Index
FTSE 250 Index
The FTSE 250 Index is a capitalisation-weighted index consisting of the 101st to the 350th largest companies on the London Stock Exchange. Promotions to and demotions from the index take place quarterly in March, June, September and December...
.
The company acquired the companies Sx3 and MVM Holdings Limited in 2005. A number of staff felt that they were now working for Sx3, due to the integration of their senior managers.
Hertfordshire Oil Storage Terminal fire
On Sunday, December 11, 2005, a major explosion and fire2005 Hertfordshire Oil Storage Terminal fire
The Buncefield fire was a major conflagration caused by a series of explosions on 11 December 2005 at the Hertfordshire Oil Storage Terminal, an oil storage facility located near the M1 motorway by Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire, England. The terminal was the fifth largest oil-products...
at the Buncefield oil depot
Hertfordshire Oil Storage Terminal
Hertfordshire Oil Storage Terminal is operated by Hertfordshire Oil Storage Ltd and commonly known as the Buncefield oil depot. It is an oil depot located on the edge of Hemel Hempstead to the north of London in the United Kingdom...
immediately adjacent to the NIS building, effectively destroyed the Hemel Hempstead Head office complex. Fortunately the two managed services staff manning the Data Centre escaped unharmed. Other Hemel Hempstead based staff were told to report to offices in Oxford and Peterborough the following week. The share price dipped on the first trading day afterwards, but recovered by lunchtime. Fortunately the company had a well-practised Disaster Recovery programme, and the company moved its Managed Services customer system backups (which were stored off-site) to run on systems based at a site in Hounslow, where a number of Northgate staff ran these during the next few months. This included a full managed network for hospitals in East Anglia
East Anglia
East Anglia is a traditional name for a region of eastern England, named after an ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdom, the Kingdom of the East Angles. The Angles took their name from their homeland Angeln, in northern Germany. East Anglia initially consisted of Norfolk and Suffolk, but upon the marriage of...
. Despite this taking place in December, when payrolls are usually run earlier than normal, every payroll for all Northgate's customers was run on time. The company became known as one that had successfully passed through a major physical disaster, and CE Chris Stone was invited to speak at various venues on commercial disaster recovery.
In October 2006, The share price fluctuated, and the company announced that they were subject to an unsolicited takeover approach. It has since been announced that this has amounted to nothing.
In June 2007, Northgate bought Arinso.
In December 2007, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts agreed to buy the company for £593 million.
In March 2008, Northgate Information Systems plc is de-listed from the London Stock Exchange following completion of the purchase by KKR. The next month, Northgate achieved a position of forty-seventh out of one hundred in ‘Britain’s Top Employer 2008'.
The most recent acquisition by the company was in November 2008, in which Northgate Information Solutions UK Ltd acquired Anite Public Sector Holdings Ltd from Anite plc.
See also
- MultiValueMultiValueMultiValue is a type of multidimensional database, typically considered synonymous with PICK, a database originally developed as the Pick operating system....
The original NoSQLNosqlIn computing, NoSQL is a broad class of database management systems that differ from the classic model of the relational database management system in some significant ways. These data stores may not require fixed table schemas, usually avoid join operations, and typically scale horizontally...
database predating Oracle, SQL Server... - Reality Product information & support