PS2000

In the late 1980s Peterborough realised there was an emerging market for PC-based products.

For smaller and medium-sized customers, a PC-based Payroll and or HR/Time and Attendance system was cheaper than the alternatives on mainframe, IBM mid-range (AS400 and its predecessors), Unix and the like.

There was no expensive server, machine room with air conditioning and Halon extinguishers etc - just a PC on a desk in the Payroll office (I could write a further whole chapter on early DOS networks, but that came a little later).

The first foray, which I know very little about, was a time and attendance system called UNISTAR. This was apparently based on expertise gained from producing a product to download pay information from mainframe to PCs.

It ran on DOS, and for some reason was sold to a Company called Smart Systems - of which I can now find no trace.

I don't know the process, but somehow the company came across a system called HR/2000, supplied by a US company called Spectrum (which now seems to be part of Epicor).  This was acquired (again I don't know the full details) by PS for use in the UK, with appropriate amendments.

The system used a database called Revelation, which was a DOS implementation of Pick.  In an interesting aside, the company that would eventually take over PS was (in an early incarnation) the owner of a different implementation of Pick called Reality - this was (and still is) used in much more than just Pay and HR systems.

When you've worked in IT as long as I have, you learn that there are fashions in IT as surely as there are in, say, trousers.  When I was working with PS2000, we got told a lot that it was flash in the pan stuff that wouldn't catch on.

Then we got told that Windows wouldn't catch on, and that if it did, you wouldn't ever use it for payroll.

Eventually we got told that Revelation's database technology (despite having a windows version that exists to this day as OpenInsight) was too old-fashioned and we needed to adopt relational databases, that highly normalised data and SQL were required by any serious IT organisation.  Fast forward to today and many organisations are discovering that SQL databases such as MYSQL and Oracle are not the only answer to servicing end users.

The original "green screen" (actually it was character-based and could work in colour if you shelled out enough on colour screens) product was well received in the market, and spawned an expansion in employees to program and support it.  This was how I became involved - originally recruited to train customers on OpenDoor Payroll, I was switched to PS2000 as the demand was greater.

Somewhere along the way, PS acquired another company that had been working on a more advanced HR system using (guess what) a newer Revelation product called A/Rev (Advanced Revelation)  this ran under DOS too, but had a number of more up-to-date features.  Along with the Company came a few employees as I recall.

Customers tended to want the newer HR product (from memory I think it was called Release 2), but as it had no payroll, we tried to weld it to the original Payroll product with varying degrees of success.   Whilst this seemed a terrible lash-up to me at the time (from my non-technical, non-sales ivory tower), in hindsight it was still pretty good for its time.

Eventually, we had to accept that even Payrollers were being seduced by the appeal of MS Windows technology and we ported the Pay and HR products to Revelation's OpenInsight - branding the resulting product PS2000 for Windows.  I wore my PS2000 for Windows shirt in the pub once and someone who vaguely knew me told his wife he didn't realise I sold double glazing.

That's pretty much where the PS2000 story ends - it didn't go any further really.  There were a few attempts to make a client server version by trying to lash together the OpenInsight UI and a SQL database, but it never really came to anything and it was succeeded by PS enterprise.