As 1996 draws to a close, I’m reminded to take a moment to look back and reflect on the events of the past twelve months. As always, we’ve taken on a quite a handful of exciting new software customers for our UNIX Accounting System. And, we’ve even had to ask a few others to be patient till after the first of the new year! We’ve also had the good fortune of finding quite an overwhelming amount of work and opportunity serving the needs of our existing customers. It could be easy in the rush to find and sell product to new customers to overlook opportunities within existing customers. That’s a mistake we’re determined not to make. And towards that end you’ll find that I’ll be personally focusing more effort in the upcoming year on satisfying the need for additional products and services within our growing community of users. One of the most exciting developments of the past year is the almost phenomenal migration towards PC/Workstations on our users desktops. Our INFONET (TinyTERM+NFS) product is catching on like wildfire, and promises to be one of the most popular products that we’ll be bringing to our installed base of customers in the coming year. Windows ’95 and INFONET have made 1996 the “Year Of The PC/Workstation” for us.
And 1997 is shaping up to be the “Year Of The Internet”. It is truly exciting to watch and be part of this staid old Welding Supply/Industrial Gas industry rush headlong towards the Information Super Highway. It sure looks to be interesting. We’ve also had our share of personnel shake-ups in 1996 too. While we’re all disappointed in the departure of Dale, I can report that he and wife Joyce are settling in nicely to their new home, and he’s taken a job with one of our larger software customers. New personnel already on board here though promise to substantially upgrade our product offerings and services! And we’re still growing and looking for more good people. Finally, throw into the mix for 1996, a new PentiumPRO dual processor system for our Unix servers, an updated Pentium workstation model, numerous minor software releases, and a major software release headed for completion, and you have quite a full year’s worth of work. Here’s wishing you and all of yours the very best of the holidays and a prosperous new year.
–David J Frea