The first version of PLUS (which stood for Program Library Update System) required the use of magnetic tape devices, and was not competitive with the other, disk-based products.
Although the company eventually responded with a disk-based version, called PLUS-DA (which stood for Direct Access, a common name for disks at the time) they did not become successful in this market.
The first breakthrough product was a report writer named Culprit, developed in-house by Gil Curtis and Anna Marie Thron, who had built the PHI payroll system.
As EDP auditors developed knowledge about business systems and computers, they could invariably produce reports faster than slower-moving, internal IT departments.
IDS was originally developed by General Electric, and Bill Curtis had supposedly gotten the rights to convert the system to run on IBM equipment.
[dubious – discuss] The decision was made in early 1973 — primarily by John Cullinane, Jim Baker and Tom Meurer — to bet the company on the effort.
Several executives joined the effort over the next three years, including Andrew Filipowski, Robert Goldman, Jon Nackerud, Ron McKinney, William Casey, Bob Davis, Bill Linn, and Ray Nawara.
[7] In 1976, the source code was sold to International Computers Limited (ICL), whose developers ported the software to run on their 2900 Series mainframes, and subsequently also on the older 1900 machines.
ICL continued development of the software independently of Cullinane, selling the originally ported product under the name IDMS and an enhanced version as IDMSX.
One of the early executives was Andrew 'Flip' Filipowski, who later founded Platinum Technology, Inc.. Another was Robert Goldman who became the CEO of several public software companies including AICorp.
Beginning in 1979, in an attempt to promote less dependence on the database sales alone, Cullinane fully integrated financial and manufacturing applications with IDMS and decision support systems, another first.
Eventually, it acquired a small Boston-based company called Computer Pictures whose graphics-focused decision support system TrendSpotter had already been integrated with IDMS and was very successful.
ICMS was unveiled in 1983 as part of a splashy 20+ city closed circuit TV broadcast that focused on IDMS/R and fueled the market for Cullinet for the next two years, but it was obvious that it was getting harder to maintain its unbroken string of quarters with sales and earnings in excess of 50%.
In fairness, many failures mark the landscape in that space and era including the Ovation product introduced with great fanfare by Ovation Technologies in a race with Lotus's Symphony suite attempting to create the early office suites dominated by Microsoft Corp. Goldengate was built pre-Windows, which was expensive for Cullinet because of all the permutations and combinations of PC hardware and memory configurations.
David Chapman, a veteran IBM and Data General executive, started an aggressive campaign to acquire technology from other companies.