| |
|
|
|
|
History
One day in 1989 co-workers Gary Heath
and Martin Davis had a four-hour parking lot discussion about how an
application could be built to view multiple
file formats and still run in minimal DOS
memory. Marty's daughter had a chalkboard in her room
so they met there the next day to
sketch out a preliminary design for their
idea. The premise was simple: If we build
a good product, people will buy it. With just a chalkboard
roadmap, $5,000 and two computers, IGC was
born. The product they designed eventually became MYRIAD,
the company's first product, and the rendition platform technology
on which it resided.
Along the way the company leveraged the rendition platform
they were creating to create consumer software products for viewing image and text content (information about human
anatomy, how cars work, how computers work). The most
popular in the series was Bodyworks, which sold over 350,000
copies through a software publisher.
The company also secured distribution partners for MYRIAD,
including the company’s first partner, Japan-based Nippon Steel
Corporation, which contracted with IGC to port and localize the MYRIAD
DOS product to Hewlett Packard Unix. In 1992,
Sherpa Corporation entered into distribution
agreement with IGC to port MYRIAD to additional hardware platforms and
became IGC's first PLM partner. Additional
data management and OEM and distribution
partners soon followed, including
Computer Vision, Autotrol, PTC, Novasoft and many others. The
company learned early how to work well with, and fully support, large
solution provider partners.
In 2001, IGC made the strategic decision to focus efforts on
bringing quality viewing and collaboration to enterprise content.
The company then targeted, and succeeded in securing, partner relationships
with top tier solution providers. Once established, the company
added related products and technologies for rendition
publishing, content security, print serving, and redaction.
The company has been entirely self-funded since its inception. To do that meant
learning key lessons about what partners and customers value most and providing it.
It also meant continuing the innovative spirit that started it all.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
