[6] Geac started with a contract with the Simcoe County Board of Education[6][7] to supply onsite accounting and student scheduling.
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.
Compared to similar LAN-based office initiatives of the same period, Geac's multi-user minicomputer-based offering provided significantly higher availability.
During the 1990s the company successfully embarked on an aggressive acquisition strategy led by Steve Sadler, CEO, and expanded into a wide range of vertical markets, including newspaper publishing, health care, hospitality, property management, and others.
Its 1999 acquisition of JBA Holdings PLC by the new leader, Doug Bergeron, Geac CEO, doubled the size of the company, but became a financial disaster.
Geac updated some of its legacy software[16] replaced its management team, ultimately tapping its chairman, Charles S. Jones,[17] to be the CEO, Donna DeWinter to be the CFO[18] (Ms. De Winter is currently CEO of Nexient Learning), and made Craig Thorburn the senior vice president of acquisitions (while he was a partner at Blake, Cassels & Graydon).
Geac then paid off its bank loans, and significantly improved its profit margins,[19][20] and its stock began to increase.
[30] In March 2006, the company was acquired by Infor Global Solutions for US$1 billion, or $11.10 per share, compared to US$1.12 five years earlier, providing the investors a 10x return.
They were very specifically designed for one many use - in this case Library Management Software, and there was a similar language for the Financial Systems business.
[38][39] Between 1971 and 1977, four Geac minicomputers were introduced: The 8000 had 300 MB disks, and initially supported 8–12 terminals (subsequently increased to permit 20–40).
The operating system maintained a list of processes that needed to be performed, and allocated them to any processor that was available at the time.
For this reason the Geac computers were not suitable for general-purpose multiuser systems, but it did make them superb designs for the applications for which they were intended.