Company History 20 Years - Pioneering Software Engineering Visible Systems is a boutique IT company, specializing in mainstreaming framework-based software engineering throughout the enterprise. It was the inspiration of two MIT graduates, one of whom had experience with start-up companies. An early client of the company, State Street Bank, thought these young graduates were "marketing visionaries" for seeing the advantages of documenting information systems in this new way.

One of the founders, George Cagliuso, started what has become a two-decade crusade that has evolved and changed many times since the beginning. Mr. Cagliuso recognized early on that, much like electronic engineering, software engineering was an area that needed improvement. He thought that in the same way reusable hardware components (called integrated circuits) brought productivity and reliability to processes in the semiconductor industry, software engineering could benefit by re-using objects. This is where the journey began, putting the pieces together to improve the overall software engineering process.

Visible Systems history predates that of the PC, Windows and even DOS. Visible Systems was the first in the modern software engineering world to recognize the need in the marketplace for a software documentation system that would allow its clients to document their information systems electronically, which was based on the old adage that "a picture is worth a thousand words."

The first product created by Visible was appropriately called a graphic word processor. In order for this early product to work, a proprietary workstation and software program were created from scratch. The value of software documentation tools to large organizations was confirmed, early on, by a study in 1980 sponsored the Hartford Insurance Group, which was searching for a way to document systems off-line.

When the first PCs entered the marketplace during the mid 1980s, Visible began a new development effort focusing on software for the PC. By the end of 1985 the company released its first DOS-based product called Visible Analyst. Today, Visible Systems produces an information technology (IT) toolbox, whereby over $50 million have been invested to provide the industry with the best leading-edge technology at very affordable prices. We continue to be the price/performance leader in the marketplace.

• • 1984 - Visible Systems is Founded by two young marketing visionaries


• • 1985 - Visible Analyst Introduced Diagramming PC-based Software released


• • 1986 - Seamlessly Integrated Analysis Module added to Visible Analyst supporting popular Yourdon and Gane and Sarson rules checking methods


• • 1987 - Seamlessly Integrated Data Dictionary (precursor to Data Repository) Module added to Visible Analyst


• • 1988 - Introduced first concurrent multi-user CASE tool for Novell Netware (Feature article appeared in LAN Magazine May 1989)


• • 1989 - Acquired Application Browser (Reverse Engineering Technology for COBOL)


• • 1990 - PC Magazine Editors' Choice for CASE tools (January 30th issue)


• • 1991 - SQL Generation, C and COBOL code generation released


• • 1992 - Visible Analyst Workbench software supporting MS Windows released


• • 1993 - Visible Analyst Workbench expansion to networking support to generic networks Workbench


• • 1994 - Oracle Edition of Visible Analyst Workbench released, adding support for Open CASE Repository strategy, operating under Oracle 7 Server RDBMS


• • 1995 - First user friendly educational modeling tool to surpass 100,000 student users world-wide


• • 1996 - Lockheed Martin selects Razor for enterprise software configuration management as a corporate standard


• • 1997 - Merged with Information Engineering Systems Corporation, an Alexandria , VA , rooted from a 6.4 million dollar contract from the NAVY for improving software productivity.


• • 1998 - Visible Analyst 6.3 Adds support for IDEF1X and UML support


• • 1999 - Acquired Tower Conepts, Inc. (Software Configuration Management Technology)


• • 2000 - Visible Analyst 7.5 Adds Support for UML, XML, Round-Trip, and Structured Software Engineering in One Integrated Toolset


• • 2001 - Acquired 3-t Software (code generation technology)


• • 2002 - Acquired LCSIS, a product data management (PDM) software system developed by McLaughlin Research, a comprehensive enterprise wide configuration management solution


• • 2003 - Winner/Finalist for the 14th Annual Jolt Award for Software Configuration Management


• • 2004 - New Product - Polaris Windows-based Issue Tracking & Workflow Management software tool.


• • 2009 - Visible Wins Indian CIITE Award: The Consortium for Indian Information Technology Education Declared Visible Analyst, "Best Structured Systems Analysis & Design Modeling Tool"


• • 2012 - Visible enters the world of Social Media with the launch of The Universal Model Framework as a new group under LinkedIn. The purpose of the Universal Model Framework Group is to promote discussion around developing more cost-effective approaches to software designs and identifying reusable designs. At the core of the group is a framework of "universal" business data objects and processes.