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Project Computing

Company

History

People

John Evershed
Kent Fitch
Ken Peadon

Thanks

History

Project Computing was formed in 1982 by Bob Davie, John Evershed, Kent Fitch, Ken Peadon, Andris Rasa and Tony Rossiter when all 6 were working at the Australian National University.

Our first software product was the NIM TP (Transaction Processing) monitor, which proved to be very popular and successful. Over a dozen software products were produced in the 1980's and early 1990's, most of which are still sold and supported world-wide by CCA Software and Treehouse Software International.

During the 1980's our software and consulting services specialised in MVS systems programming, SNA/VTAM programming, database software (specialising in support and third party products for Software AG's ADABAS database) and application design and implementation.

Towards the end of the 1980's we rekindled our interest in UNIX and TCP/IP, developing services to connect SNA and TCP/IP systems. This work led to development of early web servers and services (1993) and public key infrastructure (1994) for CSIRO, one of the pioneers of the internet and the web in Australia.

Since 1993, Project Computing's consulting and software development has been focussed on TCP/IP and web-based tools and systems.

Our most recent tool is the pageVault web site archiver.

In the mid 1990's, we sold our MVS-based software to CCA Software to allow us to avoid marketing and better concentrate our efforts on development and consulting.

Of the 6 original founders, Bob Davie has retired to grow grapes just south of Canberra and Andris Rasa and Tony Rossiter have persued solo IT consulting careers. John Evershed, Kent Fitch and Ken Peadon continue the tradition of Project Computing.

People

John Evershed

  • Applications developer, systems and network programmer, database specialist
  • Can juggle whilst riding a unicycle
  • Recent major projects:
    • Intranet web content management system (c#, XML, TeraText)
    • Internet web content management system (ASP backed by Java)
    • Web based statistics (Java, SAS, ActiveX)

Kent Fitch

Ken Peadon

  • Applications developer, systems and network programmer, database specialist

  • Programming - Adabas/Natural

  • ADABAS and Progress database specialist

Thanks

Developing software for the mainframe and SNA in the early 80's was a different proposition from developing for UNIX or Windows and TCP/IP now. Without the support of our early customers who provided access to equipment we'd never have been able to develop the software we did. We'd particularly like to thank the follow people and organisations for their demanding requirements, ideas and encouragement:

  • Henk Thijssens, Tom Cooke and David Sunderland - CSIRO, 1983
    CSIRO was the first customer for our first product, NIM. They took quite a risk in selecting unproven software from a new and unknown software company to run the CSIRO nationwide administrative network.

  • Geoff Shultz, Janet Harris, Tom Stewart, Sonny Garcia, Wai Wong - Australian National Industries (ANI)
    ANI's IT department specialised in doing more with less. NIM fitted in perfectly with their philosophy. ANI came up with the requirements for a powerful, database driven print spooling system which never lost a print job, which became the NIM-SPOOL product. Their desire to run a packaged accounting system written for the IBM CICS environment on their Fujitsu MSP mainframe (which would not support CICS) generated the NIM-CICS product. Their systems programmer, Sonny Garcia and their DBA, Wai Wong provided invaluable suggestions and even code which greatly improved our products.

  • Nick Hocking and Satish Pillai - Australian Trade Commission (Austrade)
    Austrade agreed to purchase NIM as long as it would support not just their ADABAS/NATURAL applications but also their STATUS text database. Again, a customer with an interesting requirement and the patience to foster the development of a better way of doing things helped us broaden the NIM architecture. Austrade later commissioned the PACKETIN X.25 interface, and after tolerating months of testing of both the ADASIGHT and QDUMP products, became the first production user of both.

  • Commonwealth Department of Health
    Project Computing's most widely used product, ADAREORG was commissioned by the Department of Health. Later, both ADASTRIP and DBAUDIT where written at Health, as was a commercially unsuccessful interface between NIM and Oracle.

  • John Rowe and Tim Cowley - Australian Patents Office (now known as IP Australia)
    Patents were an early user of NIM and the first user production of the NIMBUS LU6.2 application environment.

  • John Fleming, Graham Chapman, Jim Brady and Len Campbell - Reserve Bank of Australia
    The Reserve Bank were another pioneering user of NIM and the second site to use NIM-SPOOL.

  • Michael Keely, Mark Whatmore, Mary Fleming and David Rofe - CSIRO 1990's
    Our close relationship with CSIRO has extended for 20 years. In the early 90's, we were involved in CSIRO's transition from MVS-SNA to Unix-PC-TCP/IP-web architectures. CSIRO management and staff inspired us to find many interesting approaches to their problems.

  • Don Aitken - Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)
    The ABS commissioned the TISP-PRINT product.

At each of these organisations and at many others around the globe we've had the privilege of working with and being inspired by hundreds of inventive and resourceful people. Thankyou, everyone.

 
Project Computing Pty Ltd    ACN: 008 590 967 contact@projectComputing.com