History of e-work

Anyway, for everyone else interested in the history of the product, this chapter outlines the history, with details provided by the product architect himself.

Reuters

In the summer of 1987 Mike Vieyra and Steve Brown decided that consultancy would not make them rich because there were only 24 payable hours in a day. They decided to form a company that would build and sell software products with the intention of writing simple stuff that everybody wanted - a sort of WinZip approach! They named the company Sysgenics.

In the autumn of 1987 Mike found out that Reuters had a requirement for a bug-tracking system.

In the summer of 1988 Vigilante delivered to Reuters - a VAX-based bug tracking system, built using Systime. Reuters hated it, partly because of Systime’s User Interface and partly because of its inflexibility (every department in Reuters handled bug tracking differently).

Mike and Steve retired hurt and came up with a generic concept for building applications that would involve multiple people, in multiple departments, with multiple activities, all of which had to happen in some definable sequence.

Mike coined - or at least believes he coined - the term “Workflow”. The rest of the year was spent writing documentation on this non-existent system.

In November 1989, Mike contacted his old mate Maurice and asks if he'd like to quote for building the now comprehensively specified system. Maurice agreed and quoted six months of his and another’s time. Mike invested 60K of his own money to cover this.

In May 1991, Maurice delivered Hydra - 12 months over schedule, but to his credit he completed it and did not ask for any more money.

Mike and Steve went on the road with their collection of MicroVAXes, only to discover that selling software is actually harder than they thought. Over the next couple of years, they visit most UK shows, most London financial institutions and blue chip companies, not to mention a trip to Reuters in the US... and succeed in selling two tranches of it to their old friends Reuters in the UK.

Development

When Visual Basic is released, Sysgenics (well, Steve that is) produced a Windows front-end for the product. It was a bit clunky, but Reuters liked it, and it was clearly the way the world was going.

Some time in 1995 they got wind that Microsoft was planning to release a “proper” operating system to rival Unix and the (by now clearly geriatric) VAX-VMS, and decide they want some of that...

Steve retired to his back room to write several mountains of specification, including the much modified but still recognizable Database Schema and Designer Reference.

The problem now facing them was that they could not afford (a) another 18 month wait or (b) even a 6 months’ worth quote, so with the aid of their accountant, Bharat, they negotiated an £180,000 Small Firms guaranteed business loan.

They set Maurice off again (on the server) whilst hiring a couple of developers (one was Billy) to work on the graphical designer and the Windows 3.1 client (the people at CERN were too busy smashing atoms together to be bothered to invent the web just yet!).

Half way through the promised 8 months, and halfway thru the £180,000 it becomes apparent that Maurice isn’t going to be able to deliver in anything like the promised timescale.

Mike wants to give back the money, Steve says “we can build this ourselves in thirteen weeks” (that's where the ‘e-work was built in thirteen weeks’ thing first came from). Bharat convinces Mike they might as well go for it, and (in no particular order) a couple of contractors are taken on board - one plays the viola and writes code, the other rides a motorbike and once did project management. Lo and behold, with only a slight bending of the truth, the thirteen week thing actually happens and Sysgenics have a Windows product!

So off they go to the venture capitalist company 3i and convince them to put in a million or so, and they make the office very nice and hire lots of good developers and some salesmen. Hydra becomes e-work and version 3 and then version 4 is released. Version 4 is probably the first commercially viable product, but still sales are not happening.

Metastorm and Barrett Edwards

Sysgenics were on the verge of going bust, when Metastorm, an off-shoot of Novell that maintained the InForms package for them, ride in (more like the Russians in Czechoslovakia than the US cavalry to be honest).

They like the product so much they buy the company. The idea is to use InForms as the forms designer and front end for e-work. That idea is scuppered pretty early on when it is realized that the e-Work forms designer is, in fact, much better. InForms is quickly and quietly dropped.

The only problem is, sales still do not happen. At that point, Barrett Edwards International (BEI) who are a Novell sales and support shop in the UK, come onto the scene. They have the sales team and customer base to move the product, they claim - for a short while the company is called Metastorm BEI in fact, then reverts to Metastorm.

As it happens, they certainly do, and made great inroads into the workflow market. They make greater sales in the UK than Metastorm were making in the US much to Metastorm’s embarrassment (given that the US market is about ten times the size).

Since then, with determined efforts of all concerned, the product grew in strength and market share until it reached where it is today.

Steve says “Next time, I'll do it properly...”

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Process Mapping Products	Last updated: 18/10/2009