Platinum Technology

Protosoft Inc.

Industry	Computer software
Fate	acquired by Platinum Technology
Founded	1990
Defunct	1995
Headquarters	Houston, TX United States
Key people	Dr. Anthony Lekkos, Erick Rivas, founders
Products	Enterprise modeling software
Number of employees	50

Platinum Technology Inc. was founded by Andrew Filipowski in 1987 to market and support deployment of database management software products and the applications enabled by database management technology and to render related services. Over its 12-year history, it was known for its acquisition of other companies, having bought more than 50 companies between 1994 and 1999 and growing to become the eighth largest global software company with revenue of a billion dollars per year. Acquisitions included Altai, Inc. (1995),AutoSystems Corporation, Brownstone Solutions, ICON Computing, Intervista Software, Locus Computing Corporation, LBMS (1998),Logic Works (1998),Protosoft, RELTECH Group, Memco Software, Softool, SQL TOOLS, Inc., Trinzic, Viatech and VREAM (1996). The company was a member of the UML Partners consortium.

In March 1999, Platinum was itself acquired by Computer Associates (CA) for 3.5 billion U.S. dollars, at that time the largest transaction in the history of the software industry. CA offered $29.25 per share, almost a three-to-one premium over Platinum's stock price of $9.875.

In 2001, CA was sued by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), alleging that the two companies prematurely reduced competition between each other. The DOJ claimed that this was achieved by agreeing to limit discounts offered to customers before the deal was completed.

In November 1995, Protosoft was acquired by Platinum Technology for 40 million U.S. dollars. Protosoft was founded by Dr. Anthony Lekkos and Erick Rivas in 1990 to develop and market Paradigm Plus, an object-oriented analysis and design (OOAD) modeling product and associated code generation and reverse engineering tools.