Afraid of being left behind? Don't be!

DataEase was first launched in the early 80's, and is now in its 4th decade as an independent software company. The marketing machine will tell you that it has been 4 decades of success, but anyone involved knows that there has been great success but also stark disappointment. The height of success was in the early to mid 90's with 3 million installations worldwide and a mid level rating within the 100 largest software companies in the world.

Since then the path has been bumpier. DataEase never experienced the same success with its Second Generation software - Windows. We ruled the character based database market but we never managed to really convince our users that our Windows versions had the same "magic". Nevertheless, DataEase has fought on through adversity, and DFW versions 5, 6, 7 were developed and published, over the 15 years since DataEase moved to Windows. In the same period the company was a subsidiary of Sapphire Group LTD. Independent doesn't mean the same owner, and it seems that ownership and software generations go hand in hand when it comes to DataEase. In its first generation, the company was run by its founder Arun Gupta, in its second by Sapphire Group, and now when we enter the third generation, the relay batton is handed over to a new company - 4ThePeople Limited. 4ThePeople LTD - 4TP - has only one goal: to develop, publish and move DataEase back onto the international software radar. The company might be new but the team is not. It is headed by Mr. Ulrik Jacob Hoegh-Krohn, who re-entered the DataEase stage in 2007, when he took over the development of DataEase for Windows and started the development of DG3 - then called DataEase4Web. For those of you that have followed us since 2007, know that the path has been strewn with challenges if not outright obstacles, and we will not hide the fact that the transition at stages have been derailed by opposing professional views. There has been a lot of challenges to consider and the resolution has at times been long in coming. The largest challenge has been our history. As so many companies with a long history we got caught up in our own web of backwards compatibility, ill advised updates and changes, wishful thinking and last but not least, thoughtless and over optimistic promises. Things came to a head last year, and Mr. Hoegh-Krohn saw no other choice than to leave DataEase with his team, to fully focus on developing DG3. In early April, almost one year to the day of him leaving DataEase, the first working version of DG3 was ready. As of June 1st, 4TP took over all development, publishing, marketing and sales of DataEase including DataEase for DOS, DataEase for Windows 6x and 7x, as well as DG3. And we have not been resting on our laurels. The new team has a radically different view on the way forward than the previous. We don't believe that our users should be constantly badgered into moving forward to the latest vesion of our software. We think it is our responsibillity to preserve the investment that our users have already made, while at the same time offering a solution to move forward at their own pace. The result of this strategy will be obvious almost immediately. We will publish Windows 7 compliant versions of DataEase for Windows 6, called LegEasy Windows 6 - or simply 6.53; we are planning a Windows version of DataEase for DOS that will be compatible with DFD 5.x; and we are working on a new and final version of DataEase for Windows - 7.5. This way all our users can keep on using their existing application for years to come, but they can also immediately start branching out into Web and distributed applications. As part of the same strategy, DG3 is compatible with 5.x, 6.x and 7.x. A new era is upon us...

Published: 21/10/11 - 10:03:02 (Ulrik Jacob Høegh - Krohn)

Last changed: 21/12/11 - 12:01:23 (Katia Robinson)