 | |
| Formerly | K & K Associates |
|---|---|
| Type | Public |
| Industry | Software |
| Founded | 1967 |
| Founders |
|
| Defunct | March 1999 |
| Fate | Acquired by BMC Software |
| Headquarters | , US |
Boole & Babbage Incorporated, founded as K & K Associates, was an American automation computer software company based in San Jose, California. It was the oldest systems management company in the world before being bought out in a stock swap by BMC Software, announced in late 1998 and completed in early 1999.
Boole & Babbage (a reference to 19th century English mathematicians George Boole and Charles Babbage, early theorists of what would eventually become the Information Age) [1] was founded with three employees in Palo Alto, California, in 1967 as K & K Associates by Ken Kolence and David Kaitch. [2] The company, later headquartered in San Jose, California, [3] changed its name to Boole & Babbage after an investment from Franklin "Pitch" Johnson, becoming the first software company in Silicon Valley to receive venture capital funding. [2] Its main product was a computer mainframe monitoring package which was the first software that allowed the tracking of hours. The company had a million dollars in sales in its first year.
By 1972, the company's large expenses outstripped its profits, so Bruce Coleman was appointed as president to lower expenses; this was accomplished by 1978, after which Coleman left the company. Boole & Babbage almost went bankrupt when their products became obsolete due to upgrades in IBM hardware. [4] In the 1980s, the company developed new software and went public. In 1984 IBM changed its operating systems, rendering a number of Boole & Babbage's products obsolete. In response, Coleman returned as president. The company created COMMAND/Post for client/server systems in 1990, and it soon became their main product. [4]
In 1990, Boole & Babbage acquired Avant-Garde Computing, a maker of network management, monitoring, and security software and hardware. [5] [6]
In 1993, Boole & Babbage announced at the Computer Measurement Group annual conference that they would pay Paramount Pictures $75,000 a year for a two-year licence to use Star Trek imagery in their advertising for COMMAND/Post and MainView. [4] They used actor Jonathan Frakes, playing his character Commander William Riker from Star Trek: The Next Generation , in their Star Trek advertisements. [1] One of the early advertisements, titled "The Vision", featured Frakes as Commander Riker on the USS Enterprise bridge set. [7]
In the late 1990s, the computer industry started to become dominated by larger companies and Boole & Babbage were having trouble competing. In October 1998, the board of Boole & Babbage agreed to be acquired in whole by BMC Software, through a stock swap valued at US$1 billion (equivalent to $1.8 billion in 2022). [8] [9] The swap was completed in March 1999. [10]
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