Geac Computer Corporation

Geac Computer Corporation, Ltd (: GAC and NASDAQ: GEAC) was a producer of enterprise resource planning, performance management, and industry specific software based in Markham, Ontario. It was acquired by Infor Global Solutions in March 2006 for US$1 billion.

Geac was incorporated in March 1971 by Robert Kurt Isserstedt and Robert Angus ("Gus") German.

Geac started with a contract with the Simcoe County Board of Education supply onsite accounting and student scheduling. Geac programmed inexpensive minicomputers to perform tasks that were traditionally done by expensive mainframe computers. Geac designed additional hardware to support multiple simultaneous terminal connections, and with Dr Michael R Sweet developed its own operating system and own programming language (OPL) resulting in a multi-user real-time solution called the Geac 500/800.

The initial implementation of this system at Donlands Dairy in Toronto led to a contract at Vancouver City Savings Credit Union ("Vancity") in Vancouver, BC, to create a real-time multi-branch online banking system. Geac developed hardware and operating system software to link minicomputers together, and integrated multiple-access disk drives, thereby creating a multi-processor minicomputer with a level of protection from data loss. Subsequently, Geac replaced the minicomputers with a proprietary microcoded processor of its own design, resulting in vastly improved software flexibility, reliability, performance, and fault tolerance. This system, called the Geac 8000, was introduced in 1978.

Geac introduced its library management software in 1977, and a number of well-known libraries adopted it. These included the US Library of Congress and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. In the mid-1980s, it released a suite of office automation apps (calendar, wordprocessor, e-mail, spreadsheet, etc.) running on the 8000. This application suite was piloted by the federal Office for Regional Development (ORD - later absorbed by Industry Canada) and later still was used by the NAFTA Trade Negotiations Office. Compared to similar LAN-based office initiatives of the same period, Geac's multi-user minicomputer-based offering provided significantly higher availability. And its software developers were exemplary in fixing bugs promptly and responding to requests for enhancements.