Synex Systems Corporation
Encyclopedia
Synex Systems Corporation, a subsidiary of Synex International Inc.(Symbol SXI, TSX
) was formed in 1983 in an effort to develop software for the microcomputer market and was run by Synex International Vice President Murray Hendren until 1992. In 2002, Synex Systems was acquired by privately owned Lasata Software of Perth
, Australia
. In 2005, Lasata was acquired by UK
based Systems Union. In 2007, Systems Union was acquired by privately held Infor Global Solutions
, a U.S.
company that specializes in enterprise software
.
What was Synex Systems Corporation now operates as an independent business unit within Infor Global Solutions
called F9 and continues to develop and partner with new and existing ERP
and Accounting Software
solutions. It is located in Vancouver
, British Columbia
.
.
PK Harmony provides an interface from a PC to a Pick host by emulating a terminal. Connectivity is achieved by serial port-to-port cabling or a modem.
PK Harmony allows users to transfer data to and from a Pick operating system
legacy host and a DOS or Windows based PC. Development started in 1983.
PK Harmony was purchased by Pierre Bourbonnais, a former senior Synex marketing team member, and is now marketed as PK Harmony - PK Term Plus through TechnoDroids CyberCorp.
was developed starting in 1986 to allow a non-technical user, typically an accountant, to create a dynamic, customized general ledger financial report using a spreadsheet that is 'hot-linked' to an accounting system's general ledger
This product is currently in wide use, is still being updated, and is the longest lasting and most profitable of the products developed by Synex Systems.
second product offering in the mid 1980’s through its Turner Hall Publishing division, the first being Note-It, a notation utility for Lotus 1-2-3. SQZ! initially sold for US$79.95 and was a major part of Symantec's early success and helped formed the basis of the 1990s acquisitions Symantec grew from. Several people working at Synex involved with SQZ! were hired by Symantec as a result of this success.
SQZ! is a compression utility specifically designed to compress spreadsheet files and was marketed starting 1986. Sqz! is available as an add-in for 1-2-3 Release 2/2.01, and as a terminate-and-stay-resident (TSR) utility for any version of 1-2-3, Symphony or any other program that read or write 1-2-3 R2 format worksheets.
In 1988 an improved version, SQZ! Plus, was released. This was available as an upgrade priced at US$30. SQZ! was best at compressing complex business spreadsheets and could achieve compressions of between 78% and 90% on large business-analysis worksheets compared to 60% to 65% for competitors like The Worksheet Utilities 123 addin Fileworks (Funk Software
).
At one time in the early 1990s SQZ! was one of the most used utility software in the world.
SQZ! was also incorporated into Quattro Pro
as a built in utility. A Macintosh version of SQZ! called Mac SQZ! was available for Microsoft Excel.
The primary architect of SQZ! was Dale White who developed the highly efficient spreadsheet formula specific compression algorithms. He also developed a sophisticated corrupt spreadsheet recovery system that was built into SQZ! Plus. SQZ! Plus was release in 1988 as a replacement for Sqz! Version 1.5.
With the huge leaps in hard drive capacity and lower costs for these ever larger drives, and the building of compression into late versions of DOS and Windows the need for SQZ! and other file compression utilities disappeared and the SQZ! product was discontinued by the mid 1990s.
Waterworks core functionality was a Fortran
coded algorithm developed at the University of British Columbia
school of engineering. Much of the parent company Synex International Inc. was concerned with civil engineering and specialized in small hydroelectric projects and a synergy developed between the software and engineering divisions.
Waterworks saw some success being used by various water districts across the United States for water distribution analysis including the Greater Los Angeles Water District.
database file contents and helped in designing new Btrieve based accounting package interfaces for F9. @trieve allowed the user to read and write the contents of Btrieve
files to and from a spreadsheet. Many accounting products marketed at the time used Btrieve as the underlying database engine and developing an F9 interface to these accounting products required highly detailed access to the data structures which easy examination of the data greatly aided.
Because Btrieve is not a true database in that it does not contain a definition of the data being stored @trieve used a data dictionary that was defined in a spreadsheet to determine the structure of the data records.
Although limited in user appeal, @trieve was a useful utility for experts that required detailed access to Btrieve based data. A Great Plains Accounting edition of @trieve was developed and marketed by Great Plains
which was later purchased by Microsoft and became Microsoft Dynamics GP
.
Toronto Stock Exchange
Toronto Stock Exchange is the largest stock exchange in Canada, the third largest in North America and the seventh largest in the world by market capitalisation. Based in Canada's largest city, Toronto, it is owned by and operated as a subsidiary of the TMX Group for the trading of senior equities...
) was formed in 1983 in an effort to develop software for the microcomputer market and was run by Synex International Vice President Murray Hendren until 1992. In 2002, Synex Systems was acquired by privately owned Lasata Software of Perth
Perth, Western Australia
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. In 2005, Lasata was acquired by UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
based Systems Union. In 2007, Systems Union was acquired by privately held Infor Global Solutions
Infor Global Solutions
Infor Global Solutions is a privately held U.S. software company that specializes in enterprise software ranging from financial systems and resource planning to supply chain and customer relationships.-Company overview:...
, a U.S.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
company that specializes in enterprise software
Enterprise resource planning
Enterprise resource planning systems integrate internal and external management information across an entire organization, embracing finance/accounting, manufacturing, sales and service, customer relationship management, etc. ERP systems automate this activity with an integrated software application...
.
What was Synex Systems Corporation now operates as an independent business unit within Infor Global Solutions
Infor Global Solutions
Infor Global Solutions is a privately held U.S. software company that specializes in enterprise software ranging from financial systems and resource planning to supply chain and customer relationships.-Company overview:...
called F9 and continues to develop and partner with new and existing ERP
Enterprise resource planning
Enterprise resource planning systems integrate internal and external management information across an entire organization, embracing finance/accounting, manufacturing, sales and service, customer relationship management, etc. ERP systems automate this activity with an integrated software application...
and Accounting Software
Accounting software
Accounting software is application software that records and processes accounting transactions within functional modules such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll, and trial balance. It functions as an accounting information system...
solutions. It is located in Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
, British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
.
Products
Synex Systems products were diverse and targeted accounting, civil engineering, minicomputer thin client, and file compression utility markets. By 2001 the concentration was only on the accounting reporting product F9 and all other products were discontinued or sold.PK Harmony
PK Harmony was Synex System's first software offering. It is a terminal emulation package that would now be termed a thin clientThin client
A thin client is a computer or a computer program which depends heavily on some other computer to fulfill its traditional computational roles. This stands in contrast to the traditional fat client, a computer designed to take on these roles by itself...
.
PK Harmony provides an interface from a PC to a Pick host by emulating a terminal. Connectivity is achieved by serial port-to-port cabling or a modem.
PK Harmony allows users to transfer data to and from a 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...
legacy host and a DOS or Windows based PC. Development started in 1983.
PK Harmony was purchased by Pierre Bourbonnais, a former senior Synex marketing team member, and is now marketed as PK Harmony - PK Term Plus through TechnoDroids CyberCorp.
F9
F9 Financial ReportingF9 Financial Reporting
F9 is a financial reporting software application that dynamically links general ledger data to Microsoft Excel through the use of financial cell-based formulas, wizards, and analysis tools to create spreadsheet reports that can be calculated, filtered, and drilled upon...
was developed starting in 1986 to allow a non-technical user, typically an accountant, to create a dynamic, customized general ledger financial report using a spreadsheet that is 'hot-linked' to an accounting system's general ledger
This product is currently in wide use, is still being updated, and is the longest lasting and most profitable of the products developed by Synex Systems.
SQZ!
In the late 1980s microcomputer (PC) use in offices was ubiquitous and the most used program was the spreadsheet. Hard drive space was limited and expensive and many businesses found the plethora of spreadsheets they came to rely upon exceeded the space on the drives. SQZ was the first automatic file compression utility when it was introduced as Symantec’sSymantec
Symantec Corporation is the largest maker of security software for computers. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and is a Fortune 500 company and a member of the S&P 500 stock market index.-History:...
second product offering in the mid 1980’s through its Turner Hall Publishing division, the first being Note-It, a notation utility for Lotus 1-2-3. SQZ! initially sold for US$79.95 and was a major part of Symantec's early success and helped formed the basis of the 1990s acquisitions Symantec grew from. Several people working at Synex involved with SQZ! were hired by Symantec as a result of this success.
SQZ! is a compression utility specifically designed to compress spreadsheet files and was marketed starting 1986. Sqz! is available as an add-in for 1-2-3 Release 2/2.01, and as a terminate-and-stay-resident (TSR) utility for any version of 1-2-3, Symphony or any other program that read or write 1-2-3 R2 format worksheets.
In 1988 an improved version, SQZ! Plus, was released. This was available as an upgrade priced at US$30. SQZ! was best at compressing complex business spreadsheets and could achieve compressions of between 78% and 90% on large business-analysis worksheets compared to 60% to 65% for competitors like The Worksheet Utilities 123 addin Fileworks (Funk Software
Funk Software
Funk Software was a US-based company that was acquired by Juniper Networks in 2005 for US$ 122 million....
).
At one time in the early 1990s SQZ! was one of the most used utility software in the world.
SQZ! was also incorporated into Quattro Pro
Quattro Pro
Quattro Pro is a spreadsheet program developed by Borland and now sold by Corel, most often as part of Corel's WordPerfect Office.Historically, Quattro Pro used keyboard commands similar to Lotus 1-2-3. It is commonly said to have been the first program to use tabbed sheets. Actually, Boeing Calc...
as a built in utility. A Macintosh version of SQZ! called Mac SQZ! was available for Microsoft Excel.
The primary architect of SQZ! was Dale White who developed the highly efficient spreadsheet formula specific compression algorithms. He also developed a sophisticated corrupt spreadsheet recovery system that was built into SQZ! Plus. SQZ! Plus was release in 1988 as a replacement for Sqz! Version 1.5.
With the huge leaps in hard drive capacity and lower costs for these ever larger drives, and the building of compression into late versions of DOS and Windows the need for SQZ! and other file compression utilities disappeared and the SQZ! product was discontinued by the mid 1990s.
WaterWorks Analysis Program
Synex's Waterworks is a water distribution network analyzer based on F9 computer spreadsheet add-in technology. Waterworks enhances municipal water distribution design by combining both graphical and numerical results in a single interface and allows data exchange with CAD packages.Waterworks core functionality was a Fortran
Fortran
Fortran is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing...
coded algorithm developed at the University of British Columbia
University of British Columbia
The University of British Columbia is a public research university. UBC’s two main campuses are situated in Vancouver and in Kelowna in the Okanagan Valley...
school of engineering. Much of the parent company Synex International Inc. was concerned with civil engineering and specialized in small hydroelectric projects and a synergy developed between the software and engineering divisions.
Waterworks saw some success being used by various water districts across the United States for water distribution analysis including the Greater Los Angeles Water District.
@trieve
@trieve was a Synex Systems product developed in 1991 from the F9 project code. It was at first written and used as an internal utility that allowed easy examination of BtrieveBtrieve
Btrieve is a transactional database software product. It is based on Indexed Sequential Access Method , which is a way of storing data for fast retrieval...
database file contents and helped in designing new Btrieve based accounting package interfaces for F9. @trieve allowed the user to read and write the contents of Btrieve
Btrieve
Btrieve is a transactional database software product. It is based on Indexed Sequential Access Method , which is a way of storing data for fast retrieval...
files to and from a spreadsheet. Many accounting products marketed at the time used Btrieve as the underlying database engine and developing an F9 interface to these accounting products required highly detailed access to the data structures which easy examination of the data greatly aided.
Because Btrieve is not a true database in that it does not contain a definition of the data being stored @trieve used a data dictionary that was defined in a spreadsheet to determine the structure of the data records.
Although limited in user appeal, @trieve was a useful utility for experts that required detailed access to Btrieve based data. A Great Plains Accounting edition of @trieve was developed and marketed by Great Plains
Microsoft Dynamics GP
Microsoft Dynamics GP is a mid-market business accounting software or ERP Software package marketed in North and South America, UK and Ireland, the Middle East, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. It is used in many additional countries with partner supported localisations. It uses either...
which was later purchased by Microsoft and became Microsoft Dynamics GP
Microsoft Dynamics GP
Microsoft Dynamics GP is a mid-market business accounting software or ERP Software package marketed in North and South America, UK and Ireland, the Middle East, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. It is used in many additional countries with partner supported localisations. It uses either...
.