Boole & Babbage

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]