The name is a play on the phrase "as easy as 1-2-3",[1] a reference to the dominant MS-DOS spreadsheet at that time, Lotus 1-2-3 with which it competed for a fraction of the competitor's price.
The company eventually branched out developing CAD (DraftChoice, StarFlic, ProtoCAD 3D, KeyCAD), GIS/Mapping software (Precision Mapping) and SDKs (MapPro, MaptiVate), no longer focusing on As-Easy-As.
As-Easy-As is historically significant as one of the earliest and most useful shareware programs that competed with commercial software on the basis of both price and features.
Many calculation functions were appealing to the science and engineering markets, such as improved capabilities for regression analysis and matrix operations.
The program was translated by TRIUS, Inc. into Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Italian and Chinese and at the height of its popularity it was being published locally in 10+ countries in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia.